ed a large community, living at Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and Pathros-a community which had afterward an important history of its own. Meanwhile they fell into idolatry, and Jeremiah denounced both on them and on Egypt itself the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar-- a prophecy echoed from the banks of the Euphrates by Ezekiel, whose warnings, promises, and exhortations to the exiles at Babylon still kept pace with the current of events in Judæa.

174

The threatened blow soon fell. In B.C. 585 Tyre surrendered, after a siege of thirteen years. After a brief repose Nebuchadnezzar led his victorious army into Egypt, probably on some new provocation by Apries." In the absence of his own annals or other direct testimony, we can only infer from the statements of Josephus," and from the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that the chastisement he inflicted on Egypt reached the Jews who had taken refuge there. It was at this time, as we have already seen, that his general Nebuzar-adan carried off another remnant from Judæa, thereby probably almost completing the depopulation of the land. 173 There is some evidence, though far from certain, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt a second time, ten years later (B.C. 571), deposing Apries and setting up Amasis; and this may be the occasion of Ezekiel's last prophecy against that power. At some time during the interval it is almost certain that the King of Babylon subdued the nations bordering upon Judah, and for whose exultation in her destruction the prophets had denounced on them the heaviest woes, such as the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites. There is a very remarkable passage in which Jeremiah comforts the Jews amid all these judgments by contrasting His destruction of the other nations and of their present oppressors with His correction of themselves:-" Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith Jehovah: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished." No words could express more fully the principle of Jehovah's dealings with the Jews, as the type of his dealings with his own people in every age.

171 Herod. ii. 161: B.C. 581. 172 Ant. x. 9.

173 Jer. lii. 30: the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar B.C. 582. 174 Ezek. xxix. 17, xxx. 19.

The

date, the twenty-seventh year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, answers tó the thirty-fourth of Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 576.

175 Jer. xlvi. 28.

FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH TO THE CLOSE OF THE CAPTIVITY AT BABYLON. B.C. 586-536.

§ 1. The captives at Babylon-Daniel and his companions. § 2. Nebuchadnezzar's dream-The Imperial statue-The fiery furnace. § 3. Nebuchadnezzar's humiliation-His death. § 4. The successors of Nebuchad nezzar. § 5. Rise of CYRUS THE GREAT, and foundation of the Persian Empire. § 6. Coalition of Lydia, Egypt, and Babylon against Cyrus-Defeat of Croesus. § 7. Cyrus attacks Babylon-Siege of BabylonBelshazzar's feast-The city surprised and taken-End of the Babylonian Empire. § 8. Reign of " Darius the Median," probably Astyages. § 9. Daniel under Darius-The den of lions. 10. Prophecies of Danicl -i. Dream of the Image-ii. Dream of Nebuchadnezzar's madness-iii. Dream of the Four Beasts-iv. Vision of the Ram and He-goat-v. Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks-vi. Vision of the Son of God, and Prophecy of the Last Days. § 11. Subsequent history and final desolation of Babylon.

§ 1. Of all historic figures, Nebuchadnezzar most strikingly represents the power of destruction. Like his own image on the plain of Dura, he towers over the ground he has cleared

of every opponent from the Nile to the Euphrates. Above all, he had been the instrument in the hand of God to root out His people for their sins from the good land given to their fathers, but he had yet to learn that he himself was subject to their God. This lesson was taught him while he enjoyed the fruit of his victories in the city of Babylon, which he had made the wonder of the world by his "hanging gardens and other splendid works; and the appointed teacher was a young Hebrew of the first captivity, whose career at BabyIon was almost a repetition of that of Joseph at the court of

Pharaoh.

We have seen that when Nebuchadnezzar first took Jerusalem, in the third year of Jehoiakim (B.C. 605), he commissioned Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to select the most comely youths of royal and noble birth, possessed of natural grace and acquired learning, to be educated in the language and wisdom of the Chaldæans. They were to receive their food and wine from the king's table, and after three years' training they were to be brought before him. Among them were four belonging to the tribe of Judah, whose names were Daniel, Hananiah, Mihael, and Azariah, which, according to Oriental custom (as in the case of Joseph), were changed by the prince of the eunuchs into Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In sacred history, however, Daniel has retained his own name, while the other three, being only mentioned on one important occasion, are known by their Babylonish appellations.' Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food and wine, things that had been offered to idols: and, through the tender regard with which he had inspired the prince of the eunuchs, he obtained the favor of an experiment on himself and his three friends. After being fed for ten days with pulse and water, they were found in better condition than their comrades who had been nourished on the king's dainties; so this diet was continued to the end. Meanwhile God endowed them with all knowledge and wisdom, and to Daniel in particular he granted the same insight into dreams and visions that had distinguished Joseph. When the time came for them to appear before the king, he found them the fairest of all their fellow-captives, and ten times better in wisdom and discernment than all the magicians and astrologers of Chaldæa. So they stood before him among the courtiers. We must not So much is this the case, that meant by "Ananias, Azarias, and Mi many persons quite forget who are sael," in the Benedicte of our Liturgy. 2 Dan. i.

fail to notice that law of God's providence, by which, at every crisis of His people's history, he raised up for them a leader skilled in all the accomplishments of their adversaries; Abraham, the stately prince, among the Arab sheiks; Joseph, the diviner and statesman; Moses, the warrior, and learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; Daniel, the most learned sage and faultless governor in the realm of Chaldæa. Well might South reply to the flippant objection that God has no need of our learning" Much less has He need of your ignorance.' § 2. The great opportunity for the use of Daniel's power as an interpreter of dreams for the glory of God occurred in a manner very similar to the case of Joseph. The date assigned to this event is the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Lightfoot and others take this to mean the second year after the full settlement of his empire, or about B.C. 570. But as the captivity of Daniel commenced, as we have seen, a year before the accession of Nebuchadnezzar, the three years of his probation would expire in the second year, and the date may be taken literally. This result throws a flood of light on the career of Nebuchadnezzar, and especially on his repeated forbearance toward Jerusalem, and his kindness to Jeremiah. It is needless to recount in detail those pictures which are so vividly impressed on our earliest recollections, the king's troubled sleep and dreams, which he forgot when he awoke in the morning; his despotic demand of the Chaldæan soothsayers, scarcely too severe a test of their extravagant pretensions, to tell him the dream itself, as well as the interpretation; the simplicity with which, for once in their lives, they confess their impotence to discover what was not first told them, instead of boldly avowing, like Daniel, that God would not conceal from the man divinely inspired to reveal His counsels the far lesser knowledge of the signs chosen to exhibit them. When their failure had all but involved in their sentence of death the Hebrew men of learning too, Daniel obtained from the king a respite, which he and his companions spent in prayer; and he received the revelation with one of those grand utterances of praise and prayer that form the great charm of his book. The vision, which he was inspired to expound to Nebuchadnezzar, is one of several by which, at this epoch, when the great monarch. ies of Asia were about to come into collision with the powers of the West, God revealed the steps by which the successive empires were to give way before His kingdom. The symbol

of a colossal statue was perhaps connected with the image which Nebuchadnezzar soon afterward set up on the plain of Dura. As he was meditating the erection of that monument of his victories, God showed him a statue whose composition and end revealed the fate, not only of his own empire, but of all the other attempts at universal dominion to the end of time. The lesson was the same as that which was taught to the first Babel-builders on that very spot-that all such attempts are futile, for the kingdoms of the world are reserved to be the kingdoms of our God, and of his Christ. And now we can look back on the almost complete fulfillment of the sign:

There now only remain the last relics of the system of ungodly force, the fragments of the mingled iron and clay which represent what was the last empire that claimed to be universal:

"Ambition's boldest dream and last
Must melt before the clarion blast

That sounds the dirge of ROME."

The confession which Daniel's exposition of his dream drew from Nebuchadnezzar is scarcely the language of a convert to the true religion, but rather of a heathen yielding to the God of the Jews an exalted place among the gods. According to his promise, he loaded Daniel with rewards, made him ruler over the province of Babylon, and master of the Chaldæan sages, and appointed his three companions, at his request, to high offices in the province of Babylon.

Their fidelity to Jehovah soon underwent a terrible trial, but came out as unscathed as their persons from the fiery furnace.' That Nebuchadnezzar should have condemned them for such a reason so soon after the lesson he had learned, is a more striking than surprising example of a despot's impatience of opposition and readiness to take the bait of flattery. Daniel would seem to have been too firmly established in the royal favor for his enemies to venture to at

Townsend, Chronological Arrangement of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 612.

Keble, Christian Year, Monday in Whitsun Week.

6 Dan. ii. 4.

↑ Dan. iii. We have met before with an instance of this mode of execution. See p. 598.