Mat. xix. 8. 6 A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. that Zacharias, who died a martyr in the reign of Joash in his reasoning with the Jews, tells them, that Moses king of Judah, of showing a busy and pragmatical spirit, did indulge them in some cases, because of the hardness in placing this Joash, when a child, upon the throne of his of their hearts;' not that God ever did, or ever will huancestors. Jehoiada, as he was high priest, had a large mour any man, because he is obstinate and obdurate; authority even in civil affairs; the dignity of his station set him at the head of a very powerful body of men, the priests and Levites; and his quality, as first judge and president of the great council of the nation, gave him a right to defend oppressed innocence, and made it his duty to oppose the unjust usurpation of Athaliah, who had no pretence of claim to the crown, and was descended likewise from a wicked family, which God had particularly devoted to destruction. | kindness and good will, Exod. xxii. 21-24; Lev. xix. 17, 18, 34; xxv. 35; Deut. x. 19; Prov. xv. 17; xvii. 17; xviii. 24; xxvii. 10; David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, extols and recommends benevolence and mercy, forgiveness and kindness, to enemies, Ps. xv. 5; xxvii. 2, et seq.; xxxiv. 14; xxxvii. 1, 8, 21, 26; xxxviii. 12-14; xxxix. 1; xl. 1, 3; xciv. 1; ci. 5; cix. 4, 5; cxii. 5, 9; exx. 6, 7; cxxxiii. 1-3; and his own conduct afforded a noble exemplification of these virtues, as will be apparent by consulting the following passages: Ps. xxxv. 12 -15; 1 Sam. xxiv. 1, et seq.; xxvi. 1, et seq. 2 Sam. i. 4, et seq. iv. 8-12; xvi. 7—11; xix. 21–23. It cannot then be credited that one so distinguished for tenderness and benevolence of heart, as well as for pre-eminent piety, could utter any thing in direct opposition to those feelings of mercy and forgiveness which he both highly recommended, and exhibited in his own 2 The constitution of the nation moreover was such, that the crown, by divine appointment, was appropriated to the sons of David; and therefore the hereditary right was inherent in him whom he had set up, whose aunt he had married, whose kinsman he was by birth as well as marriage, and who upon these accounts, as well as all necessary qualifications for so high a trust, was the practice. Independently of this we may rest assured that no properest guardian of the succession. For he had a large share of wisdom and experience, an ardent love for the public good, courage and activity in his complexion, and a solid piety towards God ruling in his heart; and yet he did not act alone in this important affair, but had the consent and concurrence of the chief officers, both civil and ecclesiastic, the special motion and assistance of God's blessed Spirit, and, as we may suppose, the direction and encouragement of the principal prophets that were then alive. His son indeed was but badly requited for all the care which his father had taken in setting the crown upon young Joash, when, in his reign, and by his orders, he was stoned to death, and as he was expiring, cried out, 3 Lord, look upon it, and requite it.' But we must not by these words imagine that he died with a spirit of revenge, for far be it from so good a man, but that, by the spirit of prophecy, he only foretold, that it would not be long before God would find out some means of punishing the king for his barbarous usage of him; which accordingly came to pass; for in the following verses we read, that at the end of the year, the host of Syria came up against him,' and not long after that, his own servants conspired against him, and slew him on his bed.' 56 a It must be confessed that, at first sight, these imprecations appear cruel and vindictive, irreconcilable with the gentle spirit of piety and religion; and some unhesitatingly acknowledging them to be indefensible on Christian principles, rest the defence solely on their accordance with the character of the Jewish dispensation; which, say they, did not inculcate that cordial forgiveness of injuries, and even love of our enemies, which form an essential and peculiar doctrine of the gospel. In this representation the inquirer will not be disposed to acquiesce, when he reflects that the Hebrew Scriptures do forcibly enjoin the duties of forgiving injuries, Exod, xii. 49; xxiii. 4, 5; Lev. xix. 17, 18; Deut. xxxii. 35; Prov. xi. 17; xix. 11; xx. 22; xxiv. 29; Zech. vii. 10; of doing good to enemies, Exod xxiii. 4, 5; Prov. xxv. 21; Jer. xxix. 7; and of cultivating mutual unmerciful and revengeful sentiment was ever suggested by the Holy Spirit, or ever found entrance into a work of inspiration. From these observations we may with certainty infer that the pas intended to convey any bitter and unrelenting malediction. Nor will sages in question, however they may appear, were undoubtedly not they be deemed to do so, provided due allowance be made for the bold phraseology of oriental poetry, which must generally be receiv ed with considerable abatement; and provided also, they be understood with the reservation which ought to accompany all our wishes and addresses to the Deity, namely, that he would grant them only so far as may be consistent with his will and providence. If the imprecative parts of the book of Psalms be taken with these limitations, as in reason they ought, they will be found in substance merely to express a wish that the wicked men spoken of might receive the just recompence of their deeds, and that the punishment they deserved might speedily overtake them, if such were the will of God. The impious and transgressors are those alone upon whom the Psalmist imprecates the Divine vengeance; and there is nothing of vindictive feeling in praying for that which he believed the Divine justice, as well as the Divine promise were engaged to inflict; while at the same time his entire confidence in the absolute perfections of the Supreme Being atferds ample evidence that he calls for this vengeance only so far as might be accordant with the divine attributes of wisdom, goodsupplied by Ps. xxviii. 4, 5, where he prays the Almighty to ness, and equity. A strong confirmation of this reasoning is give them according to their deeds, according to the wickedness of their endeavours; to give them after the work of their hands; to render them their desert; and he immediately subjoins as a reason for the petition, and a vindication of it, because they regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation of his hands, he shall (will) destroy them, and not build them up.' Such imprecative addresses are in reality the expression of an earnest desire that the will of God may be done in earth as it is his own honour as well by the punishment of the iniquitous as by in heaven, and that, if it seemed good unto him, he would assert the preservation of the righteous. The persons to whom the im precations refer, were inveterate adversaries, plotting against the life of the Psalmist, and maliciously intent upon effecting his ruin. To pray to be rescued from their wicked devices, was clearly lawful; and, considering their numbers and persevering malignity, his escape might seem utterly impracticable without their entire overthrow or extirpation; a prayer for their destruc tion, therefore, was equivalent to a prayer for his own preserva tion and deliverance. Besides, they were for the most part not only personal enemies, but hostile to the people of Israel, rebels to their heavenly king, and violators of his commands. To desire the punishment of such characters arose, it may fairly be pre sumed, not from personal vindictive feelings, but from a regard to religion, and hatred of iniquity; and was in fact tantamount to desiring the Almighty to vindicate his glory by inflicting the chastisements, which they deserved, and which he has denounced against the proud contemners of his laws. By many writers the passages objected to are explained as predictions; and this is not at variance with the Hebrew idiom; which admits, under some circumstances, the use of the imperative for the future as P. A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. 1 but the sense of the word is, that God therefore connived at some things, because the dispensation under which they lived wanted proper efficacy to work their hearts to a greater softness. We are not therefore to wonder that we find some disparity in the behaviour of a Christian and Jewish martyr; but that such prophetical | declarations, concerning the future punishment of enemies and persecutors, were not thought wicked and uncharitable, even under a more perfect dispensation, we have the example of the great apostle of the Gentiles to evince; who, speaking of Alexander the coppersmith, who had greatly opposed him, the Lord reward him,' says he, according to his works;' where it is to be observed that the king's manuscript reads doował, and not down, that is, shall or will reward, and most of the ancient commentators have remarked, that this is not an imprecation, but a prediction only, not unbecoming an apostle. 2 4 there should fall to the earth nothing of what he had said concerning the house of Ahab;' and it must be acknowledged, that for his performance of the divine commands in this regard, he received commendations from God, and a settlement of his family in the throne of Israel for four successions; and yet we may say of him, that he meant not so, neither did his heart think so:' he was still a bad man, though he did well in executing that which was right in God's eyes,' as to the abolishment of the worship of Baal; but his obstinate persistance in the sin of Jeroboam may be justly all against him, as an argument of his false-heartedness in all his other actions. Why he continued in this kind of idolatry, the reasons were much the same with him, that they were with the first institutor of it,-lest, by permitting his subjects to go to the place appointed for divine worship, he might open a door for their return to their obedience to the What God says of the king of Assyria, whom he calls house of David; and not only so, but disoblige likewise 'the rod of his anger, and the staff of his indignation,' is a great part of the nobility of the nation, who, by this not unapplicable to Jehu, after he was advanced to the time, had been long accustomed, and were warmly throne of Israel: 'I sent him against the people of my affected to the worship of the golden calves: herein, wrath to tread them down, like mire of the streets, how-however, he made a plain discovery of his sin and folly, beit, he meant not so, neither did his heart think so, but it was in his heart to destroy, and cut off nations not a few.' Jehu indeed made great ostentation of his zeal for the Lord,' and declared that, during his administration, 2 Tim. iv. 14. 3 Young's Sermons. Whitby's Commentary on the New Testament. xxxvii. 27; Gen. xx. 7; xlii. 18; xlv. 8; Prov. iii. 4; iv. 4; and the employment of the imperative mood, when declaring future events, is not unusual with the sacred writers, as in Is. vi. 10; viii. 9, 10; ix. 3; xvii. 1; xxix. 9; Jer. i. 10; Ezek. xliii. 3. In some instances, a prayer or wish for the punishment of sinners may be nearly equivalent to a prediction, inasmuch as it is founded on the belief, and meant to imply, that, according to God's moral government of the world, punishment most certainly awaits them. Some of the imprecations in the Psalms may, then, be understood as declarative of the just judgments of God, which would inevitably fall upon the impious; but in others, and perhaps most of them, both the natural construction of the sentences, and the full force and propriety of the expressions, require them to be taken in an imprecative sense. To explain them in any other sense is doing violence to the laws of grammatical interpretation; yet even in this light, considered as imprecations, they amount to no more than a wish that the impious may be dealt with according to the eternal and unalterable laws of divine justice, that they may openly and before the world receive the penalties of crime, provided it be the will of God; which surely is neither an unnatural nor unreasonable wish in those, who anxiously seek the punishment of vice, and the maintenance of true religion and virtue. In the Psalmist, moreover, it is a wish not proceeding from a desire to gratify a personal and vindictive feeling, but partly from a desire of self-preservation, and partly from anxiety to see the worship and glory of God triumphant over all enemies. Imprecations, therefore, made with the limitations, and originating in the motives just mentioned, so far from being liable to the charge of maliciousness and revenge, are in accordance with the purest spirit of religion, and with the exercise of the most extensive charity. Of all those tremendous imprecations which appear in our common English version of Deut. xxvii. 15-26, there is not one authorized by the original. The Hebrew texts express no kind of wish, but are only so many denunciations of the displeasure of God against those who either were or should be guilty of the sins therein mentioned, and of the judgments which they must expect to be inflicted upon them, unless prevented by a timely and sincere repentance. And agreeably to this view, the sacred text should have been rendered 'cursed they,' or 'cursed are they,' and not cursed be they,' in the sense of Let them be cursed; the word be, though inserted in our translation, having nothing answerable to it in the Hebrew. -Horne's Introduction.-ED. in not daring to trust God with the keeping of his kingdom, though it was from his kindness and donation that he had it, and in apprehending any danger from the house of David, or the kingdom of Judah, which were both now in so weak and declining a condition, that they were much more likely to be swallowed up by him. The truth is, Jehu was a wicked, bold, furious, and implacable man; but a man of this complexion, considering the work he was to be set about, was a proper instrument to be employed; and so far is it from tending to the reproach, that it is infinitely to the glory of God, that he can make use of such boisterous and unruly passions of mankind for the accomplishment of his just designs, according to the observation of the royal Psalmist, Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of his wrath shalt thou restrain.' This he plainly did in the case of Jehu; for after he had settled him in the possession of a kingdom, and still found that he persisted in his political idolatry, he brought 8who smote the coasts down the king of Syria upon him, of Israel,' and quite wasted all that part of his kingdom which lay beyond the river Jordan. 76 There is this to be said, however, concerning Jehu's cutting off Ahaziah, and the other branches of his family, that though his primary intent in doing it was to secure himself in the possession of the kingdom, against all claims that might come from the house of Ahab; yet did he not act entirely contrary to his commission, because 10 Ahaziah was the son of Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, and the order of God was, 11that the whole house of Ahab should perish;' but then the question is, where it was that Ahaziah was slain? because in the two accounts that we have of his death, there seems to be some repugnancy. The account which we have in the second book of Kings runs thus:-12 When Ahaziah saw the death of Jehoram king of Israel, he fled by the way of the garden 42 Kings x. 10. 5 Ibid. ver. 29. 7 Ps. lxxvi. 10. Poole's Annotations. 82 Kings x. 32. 102 Kings viii. 18. 12 Ibid, ver. 27. 9 Poole's Annotations on 2 Kings x. 14. 112 Kings ix. 8. A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON, house, and Jehu followed after him, and said, smite him fore we must endeavour to find out some other reason also in his chariot: and they did so, at the going up to for the violence of his rage and indignation against him. Gur, which is by Ibleam, and he fled to Megiddo, and When the prophet Elisha carried the detachment of there died but in the book of Chronicles it is said, that the Syrian army, which was sent to apprehend him at 1 when Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Dothan, hoodwinked, as it were, into the city of Samaria, Ahab, and found the princes of Judah, even the sons of Jehoram, we find, would have gladly taken this advanthe brethren of Ahaziah, that ministered unto Ahaziah, he tage, and fallen upon them with the sword: › ‹ My slew them. And he sought Ahaziah, and they caught him, father, shall I smite, shall I smite them?' So eager was (for he was hid in Samaria,) and brought him to Jehu, he to have them destroyed, as we may learn from the and when they had slain him, they buried him.' repetition of his words! But by no means would the prophet permit him; on the contrary, he ordered them to be treated with much civility, and dismissed in peace. A usage this which deserved a better return than what they made the Israelites the year following, when they came and besieged Samaria, and sorely distressed it. The king of Israel, therefore, reflecting on the opportunity which, had he employed it as he desired, would have disabled the army from making any fresh invasions, but was unhappily lost, by listening to an old doated prophet, as he might call him, was grieved beyond measure, and hereupon vowed to make his life pay for the lives of those, who, by his counsel, had escaped, and were now returned to repeat their hostilities. It may be sup 2 Now, in order to reconcile the different accounts of the same event, we must observe, that as one great end of writing the book of Chronicles, was to supply such matters as had been omitted in the book of Kings; so this account of the death of Ahaziah, in the latter, is very short, and included in the story of Jehoram, that the reader, at one and the same view, as it were, might per- | ceive in what manner it was that both these princes fell; but in the former it is told more at large; and therefore, to complete the history, we must take in both accounts, and from thence we may gather,—that upon seeing Jehoram mortally wounded, Ahaziah turned his chariot, and made the best of his way to Samaria, in order to escape into his own kingdom,--but finding the passes too nar-posed likewise, that upon the return of the Syrian army, rowly guarded, he thought proper to conceal himself in the town, in hopes of a better opportunity; that Jehu, in the mean time, coming to Samaria and having intelligence that Ahaziah was lurking there, ordered that diligent search should be made for him, and when he was found, that he should be carried to Gur, the place, in all probability, where his father Joram had slain all his brethren, and there be killed in his chariot, that so his servants might immediately carry off his corpse, and bury it. But as Jehu's order to the officers that were intrusting the horrid story, and that from the mother's own ed with the execution, was only, that they should smite him, they thought it enough to give him a mortal wound, so that his servants carried him from thence to Megiddo, the next town in the tribe of Issachar, where he died. This makes the circumstances consistent: and though we are no ways concerned, especially when the sacred history is silent, to assign any reasons for such furious passions as are frequently observed in great and wicked men; yet it may be no hard matter to imagine something more probable, than what Josephus makes the cause of Jehoram's indignation against Elisha, and his vowing to take off his head; even because he refused to intercede with God for the removal of the famine, that had, at this time, so sorely wasted the city of Samaria. From the many miracles which Elisha did, the king very likely might be convinced, that the same spirit which once resided in Elijah was now descended upon him; and therefore, as Elijah had power, by his prayers, either to shut or open the windows of heaven, either to cause or remove a famine, as he pleased, he might possibly imagine, that God had conferred the same privilege upon Elisha, and might therefore be highly incensed against him, because he would not make use of it in the preservation of a city reduced to the utmost distress. But we can hardly imagine, that a wicked and idolatrous prince, as Jehoram certainly was, would ever entertain so high a conception of any of the Lord's prophets: and there 12 Chron. xxii. 7, &c. Jewish Antiq. b. 9. c. 2. | the king of Israel, knowing himself in no condition to oppose them, might possibly be for purchasing a peace at any rate; which Elisha might endeavour to dissuade him from, by giving him all along assurance, that the enemy should at length be defeated. Finding however no effect in the prophet's promises, and, on the contrary, seeing his capital closely besieged, and the people reduced to great extremity of want, he began to repent him of following his advice; and being shocked at hear mouth, of her being forced to eat her own child for hunger, he fell into a rage, and vowed to be revenged of Elisha, as one who, by his bad counsel, had occasioned all that misery: "God do so to me, and more also, if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand on him to-day;' never considering that his own manifold and crying sins, especially his obstinate adhering to the idolatry of the calves, and the whoredoms and witchcrafts of his mother Jezebel, were the true and proper causes of all his calamities. Jehu, as we said before, was a wicked and ambitious man, and it is much to be questioned whether he would have executed the divine will so punctually, had it not fallen in with his own interest and designs. He had now extirpated the house of Ahab, and, as Ahab had been the first introducer of the idolatry of Baal into the kingdom of Israel, he could not but think that the priests and prophets, and such as adhered to the worship of that false God, were of Jezebel's faction, and might, at one time or other, take occasion to revenge her death. Something or other was therefore necessary to be done, in order to get rid of this dangerous set of men, and, that the business might be done effectually, to get rid of them all at once. * He was a person of a known indifference in matters of religion, who in this regard always conformed to the humours of the court, and, in the reign of king Ahab, had been as strenuous a worshipper 6 But, even if we take the words 'servants' and 'worshippers' in their utmost latitude, we need not doubt but that the temple of Baal, which was built in the capital city, and near the royal palace, and, being the chief in its kind, was designed for the use of the king and queen, and, particularly perhaps for such great and high solemnities, was large and capacious enough to hold them all. For, besides this principal building, there might be several outward courts, as there were in the temple at Jerusalem, where the people stood while they worship 7 A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. of Baal as any; and therefore, how could the people tell, when they read his proclamation for a great feast, nd a solemn sacrifice to be offered unto Baal, but that, ⚫in good earnest, he had returned to his former love to the religion which he once embraced, and only deserted for a while, in complacency to others? He had gone on a little oddly indeed at his entrance upon the government, had murdered their chief patroness, and made free with some of their priests likewise; but these priests perhaps were 'domestics to Jezebel, or too nearly related to Ahab's family, not to go off in the common slaughter.ped, as they did in the temple service, and these, togeSome instances of this kind could hardly be helped in the heat of execution, when the man was resolved to secure himself, and remove all competitors: but now that he has nothing to fear, why should we think, but that a prince who has no sense of religion at all, should be a worshipper of our god Baal, (that glorious luminary which shines so bright in the firmament of heaven,) as he is of the golden calves?" Thus, we may suppose, the Baalites reasoned, upon reading the king's proclamation so apparently in favour of their idolatry; and God, in his judgment, suffered their foolish hearts to be thus darkened, and because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved, for this cause he sent upon them a strong delusion, that they might believe a lie.' But whether they deluded themselves into this persuasion or not, this they knew by experience, that Jehu was a man of a fierce and bloody temper, who would not fail to put his threats in execution; and therefore reading in the same proclamation, that whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not live,' they found themselves reduced to this sad dilemma, either to go or die; and therefore they thought it the wisest way to run the hazard, and throw themselves upon his mercy, having this at least to plead for themselves, that they were not disobedient to his commands. only remaining question is, if every one obeyed this summons, how could the temple of Baal be capable of receiving them all? 5 46 The Now the words of Jehu's summons are these: Call unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests, let none be wanting; for I have a great sacrifice to offer unto Baal. And Jehu did it in subtilty, to the intent that he might destroy the worshippers of Baal;' in which words we may observe, that two particular orders of men are distinctly mentioned, the prophets and priests; and therefore we may presume, that the servants and worshippers who are joined with them, were some of an inferior kind, such as Levites in the Jewish, or deacons in the Christian church, who attended upon the other in their sacred ministrations; because in the twenty-second verse, we find Jehu ordering him, who was over the vestry, to bring forth vestments for all the worshippers of Baal,' which cannot be meant of the people in general, because they wore no distinct garments in their worship either of God or Baal, but of priests and ministers only. These were the great support of the present idolatry; and therefore Jehu concluded very justly, that, if he did but once destroy them, all the common worshippers would fall away of course. 2 Thes. ii. 11. 32 Kings x. 19. a Baal and Astaroth are commonly joined together; and as it ther with the temple itself, would afford space sufficient for all the idolaters of that kind, both ministers and people, that were then in the whole kingdom. For, since the days of Ahab, by the ministry of Elijah, Elisha, and the rest of the prophets, as well as by the slaughter which Hazael, in his wars against Israel, had made among many of them, the number of Baal's worshippers had been greatly diminished. Jehoram himself, as we read, 8 put away the image of Baal that his father had made,' and when the king withdrew his presence and encouragement, his subjects, without doubt, for the generality, followed his example; for it cannot be supposed, that the worship of such senseless idols could ever be kept up, especially among a people that had the oracles of God in their custody, without the influence of some great authority, or the consideration of some wicked and worldly ends. CHAP. III.—Of Jonali's Mission to Nineveh, and abode in the Whale's Belly. In the whole compass of the Old Testament, I know of no passage that has been made so popular a topic of banter and ridicule, and which the lovers of infidelity, in all ages, have so much delighted to descant upon, as the story of Jonah's continuing three days and three nights in the whale's belly.' The story indeed, at first hearing, sounds surprisingly; and therefore we need not wonder that the wit and sagacity of a Porphyry or a Julian found some plausible exceptions against it, which our modern retailers and malicious improvers of their objections have endeavoured to decry as a wild romance, or at best but a parabolical representation of something else. "That a man, thrown into the sea with all his clothes on, should, in the very nick of time, meet with a fish, and such a fish as was never heard of before, large enough to swallow him up quick, and, without hurting a hair of his head, to keep him in his stomach for so many days and nights alive; that in this narrow and gloomy prison he should be able to breathe, and live, and be nourished; thence send up his prayers to God, and thence promise himself a deliverance in due time; this is an account of things so very absurd, that there is no possibility of believing it. For admitting that Jonah got safe and sound down the whale's throat, yet how could he subsist there without air, or continue any time The stomach, we know, without being parboiled? would do its office; and, therefore, we cannot but think, that in a few hours, much more in three days, the man 6 Poole's Annot. 'Patrick's Commentary 2 Kings iii. 2. is believed that Astaroth denotes the moon, we have good reason to say, that Baal is put for the sun.-Calmet's Dictionary. A. M 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. must, of course, have been totally dissolved, and his body converted into the body of the fish; or if its digestion was not so quick, he must, at least, when cast upon the shore, have been sadly sodden, and unfit to be sent upon another expedition. Now, we have wrong conceptions of God, if we think that, because he made the children of Israel his peculiar people, he therefore neglected all the world besides. On the contrary, Though he showed his word unto 3 Ps. cxlvii. 19. "What God can do we must not dispute; but then great care should be taken, not to magnify his power to dry.' The prophet promised much spoil to the enemy: Take the diminution of his wisdom, or to think, that he is so the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold; for there is no end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.' And the lavish of his miracles as to save a rebellious prophet, historian affirms, that many talents of gold and silver, preserved that was disobeying his orders, and fleeing, if possible, from the fire, were carried to Ecbatana. According to Nahum, from his presence, that deserved indeed to be left to the the city was not only to be destroyed by an overflowing flood, but mercy of the waves, and made food for the fishes of the the fire also was to devour it; and, as Diodorus relates, partly by water, partly by fire, it was destroyed. The utter and persea, rather than vouchsafed so stupendous a preserva-petual destruction and desolation of Nineveh were foretold: tion; and all this, for what? Even to compel him to go, against his will, to a wicked city, with an unwelcome message; as if there had been no prophet in Israel, but this sullen and refractory man, to be sent upon this errand." The Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof. Afflic tion shall not rise up the second time. She is empty, and void, and waste. The Lord will stretch out his haud against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!' In the second century, Lucian, a native of a city on the banks of the Euphrates, testified that Nineveh was utterly perished, that there was no vestige of it remaining, and that none could tell where once it was situate. This testimony of Lucian, and the lapse of many ages during which the place was not known where it stood, render it at least somewhat doubtful whether the remains of an ancient city, opposite to Mosul, which have been described as such by travellers, be indeed those of ancient Nineveh. It is perhaps probable that they are the remains of the city which succeeded Nineveh, or of a Persian city of the same name, which was built on the banks of the Tigris by the Persians, subsequently to the year 230 of the Christian era, and demolished by the Saracens in 632. Iu contrasting the then existing great and increasing population, and the accumulating wealth of the proud inhabitants of the mighty Nineveh, with the utter ruin that awaited it,-the word of God, (before whom all the inhabitants of the earth are as grass Nineveh, at the time when Jonah was sent thither, was the metropolis of the Assyrian empire, and one of the largest and most ancient cities in the world. According to the best chronologers, it was built not long after the flood, and very soon after the tower of Babel, by Nimrod; but being afterwards greatly enlarged by Ninus, from him it received its name. It was situated upon the banks of the Tigris, and, as Diodorus has given us the description of it, was, in length, 150 stadia; in breadth, 90; and in circumference, 470; which, being reduced to our measure, make it about 21 miles long, 9 broad, and 54 round. How stately its walls, and how lofty its towers were, the same historian has taken care to inform us; and how great the number of its inhabi-hoppers), by Nahum was- Make thyself many as the cankertants was, we may learn from the 120,000 children, who could not discern between their right hands and their left: for, according to a proportionate computation, there must have been in the whole above 600,000 per sons." B. 2. Bib. 2 2 Jonah iv. 11. a Although Nineveh formed the subject of some of the earliest of the prophecies, and was the very first which met its predicted fate, yet a heathen historian, in describing its capture and destruction, repeatedly refers to an ancient prediction respecting it. Diodorus Siculus relates, that the king of Assyria, after the complete discomfiture of his army, confided in an old prophecy, that Nineveh would not be taken unless the river should become the enemy of the city; that after an ineflectual siege of two years, the river, swollen with long-continued and tempestuous torrents, inundated part of the city and threw down the wall for the space of twenty furlongs; and that the king, deeming the prediction accomplished, despaired of his safety, and erected an immense funeral pile, on which he heaped his wealth, and with which himself, his household, and palace were consumed. The book of Nahum was avowedly prophetic of the destruction of Nineveh: and it is therefore told that the gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.' Nineveh, of o'd, like a pool of water-with an overruming flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof.' The historian describes the facts by which the other predictions of the prophet were as literally fulfilled. He relates that the king of Assyria, elated with his former victories, and ignorant of the revolt of the Bactrians, had abandoned himself to scandalous inaction; had appointed a time of festivity, and supplied his soldiers with abundance of wine; and that the general of the enemy, apprized, by deserters, of their negligence and drunkenness, attacked the Assyrian army while the whole of them were fearlessly giving way to indulgence, destroyed great part of them, and drove the rest into the city. The words of the prophet were hereby verified: While they be folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully worm, make thyself many as the locusts. Thou hast multiplied |