A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. 693. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. atry. The graves of idolatrous priests he dug up, and burned their bones upon some of these altars, thereby to defile and pollute them for ever; and whatever priests of the Levitical order had at any time sacrificed on the high places, though it were to the true God, these he took care to depose from their sacerdotal office. e The houses of the Sodomites he broke down: Tophet, f which was in the valley of Hinnom, he defiled. The horses & dedicated to the sun he re done. He abolished the idolatrous profanations of the | carved and molten images that were dedicated to idoltemple; restored, in all things, the reformation which his father had made, and obliged all his subjects to worship and serve the Lord only; so that, after this, God blessed him with a long and prosperous reign, longer indeed than any of the kings of Judah, either before or after him, had reigned. He possessed the throne full five and fifty years: and yet, notwithstanding his signal repentance, because his former wickedness was so great, he was not allowed the honour of being buried in any of the royal sepulchres, but was laid in a grave made in the garden belonging to his own house, called the garden of Uzzah," and was succeeded by his son Amon. This prince, imitating the first part of his father's reign, and not the repentance of his latter, gave himself up to all manner of wickedness and impiety; so that God shortened his government, by permitting some of his own domestics, after a reign of two years, to conspire against him, and slay him : but as wicked as he was, the people of the land took care to revenge his murder, by putting all to death who had any hand in it, though they would not, at his burial, honour him, any more than his father, with a place among the sepulchres of the sons of David. derivatives are used. Here follow proofs. In chap. xxiii. 6, it is said, that Josiah brought out the groves from the house of the Lord.' This translation seems very absurd; for what grove could there be in the temple? there was none planted there, nor was there room for any. The plain meaning of vaiyotse eth haasherah nibbeyth Yehovah is, And he brought out the (goddess) Asherah from the house of the Lord, and burnt it.' That this is the true meaning of the place appears further from verse 7, where it is said, he broke down the houses of the Sodomites,' (hakkedeshim, of the whoremongers,) where the women wove hangings for the grove,' (bottim laasherah, houses or shrines for Asherah.) Similar perhaps to those which the silversmiths made for Diana, (Acts xix. 24.) It is rather absurd to suppose that the women were employed in making curtains to encompass a grove. The Syriac and Arabic versions countenance the interpretation I have given above. In verse 6, the former says, he cast out the idol, dechlotho, from the house of the Lord,' and in verse 7, he threw down the houses, dazione, of the prostitutes; and the women who wove garments, ledechlotho, for the idols which were there. The Arabic is exactly the same. From the whole it is evident that Asherah was no other than Venus; the nature of whose worship is plain enough from the mention of His son Josiah, who was then a child no more than eight years old, succeeded in the throne; but, having the happiness to fall under the conduct of better guardians in his minority, than did Manasseh his grandfather, he proved, when grown up, a prince of very extraordinary worth, equal, if not superior, in piety, virtue, and good-whoremongers and prostitutes. I deny not that there were groves ness, to the best of his predecessors. In the sixteenth year of his age, he took upon him the administration of the kingdom; and beginning with the reformation of religion, endeavoured to purge it from all those corruptions, which had been introduced in the preceding reigns. To this purpose, he took a progress through the whole kingdom, and wherever he came, brake down the altars, cut down the groves, c and brake in pieces all the a This garden, as some think, was made in that very spot of ground where Uzzah was struck dead, for touching the ark of the Lord,' (2 Sam. vi. 7.) but others imagine, that this was the place where Uzziah, who died a leper, was buried, (2 Chron. xxvi. 23.) and that Manasseh chose to be buried here, as unworthy, because of his manifold sins, whereof he nevertheless repented, to be laid in any of the royal sepulchres of the kings of Judah.-Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries. This, as some Jewish authors observe, is the usual number of years to which the sons of those kings did arrive, who, by their abominations, provoked God to anger; as they instance in the son of Jeroboam, (1 Kings xv. 25.) the son of Baasha, (chap. xvi. 8.) the son of Ahab, (chap. xxii. 51.)—Patrick's Commentary. consecrated to idolatrous worship among the Gentiles, but I am sure that such are not intended in the above cited passages, and the text in most places reads better when understood in this way.-Dr A. Clarke, 2 Kings xxi. end of chap.-ED. d Several of these priests, seeing the worship of the temple abandoned, and, after that the tenths, and offerings, and sacrifices were taken away, having nothing to subsist themselves, had the weakness to repair to the high places, and there ofler unto God such oblations and sacrifices as the people brought them; for it does not appear that any of them entered into the service of false gods; but because this was giving countenance by their presence and ministry to a worship that was forbidden, (Deut. xii. 11.) he would not receive them any more into the service of the temple, though he suffered them to be maintained by it. He puts them, in short, into the conditions of those priests that had any blemish, who might not offer the bread of their God,' and yet might eat the bread of their God, both of the holy and most holy,' Lev. xxi. 21, 22.—Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries. e This was the name which is sometimes given to the most infamous of all prostitutes, who expose their bodies to be abused contrary to nature, in honour of those filthy deities whom they worshipped. Their houses were near the temple, and therefore these were persons consecrated to impurity; and that they might commit their abominations with a greater licentiousness, they had women appointed to make them tents, wherein they were wont to retire upon these detestable occasions.—Culmet's Commentary. f It is the general opinion of the Jews, that the word tophet comes from toph, which, in their language, signifies a drum; because drums, in this place, were used to be beat, in order to deaden the cries of those children which were burned alive to the idol Moloch; but there is one objection to this etymology, name are in use now, were at all known to the ancients. There was e In 2 Kings xxi. 3 and 7, it is said, that Manasseh made a grove, and he set a graven image of the grove,' &c., vaiyasem eth pesel haasherah, asher asah; ‘And he put the graven image of Asherah, which he had made,' into the house. Asherah, which we translate grove, is undoubtedly the name of an idol; and probably of one which was carved out of wood. R. S. Jarchi, on Gen. xii. 3, says, that Asherah means a tree, which was worship-ly, that it does not appear that the larger kind of drums, such as ped by the Gentiles; like as the oak was worshipped by the ancient Druids in Britain, Castel in Lex. Hept. sub voce TMn, defines Asherah thus: a wooden image dedicated to Astarte or Venus. The LXX. render the words by a2005; and Flaminius Nobilis, on 2 Kings xxiii. 4, says, "Again Theoderet observes, ahoos is Astarte and Venus: and by other interpreters called Ashtaroth." The Targum of Ben Uzziel, on Deut. vii. 5, Their groves shall ye cut down,' translates the place thus: veilaney sigedeghon tekatsetsim, and the oaks of their adoration shall ye cut down.' From the above it is pretty evident that idols, not groves, are generally intended where asherah and its 6 a lesser sort, indeed, or what we call a tabor, wherewith they made music in their dancing; but these were not loud enough for the present purpose, and the larger kind we owe to the Arabians, who first brought them into Spain, from whence they were dispersed all Europe over.-Le Clerc's Commentary. g It is certain that all the people of the east worshipped the sun, and consecrated horses to it, because they were nimble and swift in their course, even as they supposed it to be: The Persian appeases the ray-encircled Apollo with a horse, lest a slowfooted victim should be given to the fleet God." (Ovid. Fast. b. A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. C39. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. moved; burned its chariots with fire; and being not satisfied with destroying all the monuments of idolatry in his own dominions, he visited in person the cities of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the rest of the land which had formerly been possessed by the ten tribes, and there did the same. But while he was at Bethel, a discovering by the inscription the monument of the prophet who was sent from Judah to declare against the altar which Jeroboam had there set up, and (above three hundred years before) to name the very name of Josiah who was to destroy it; he would not suffer it to be touched, nor his bones to be molested. Having thus carried on the work of reformation in the distant parts of his kingdom, he took care in the next place, to have the temple repaired. To this purpose, he ordered Hilkiah the high priest to take a general view of it, and see what was necessary to be done; who, while he was surveying and examining every place, chanced to find a book of the law of the Lord given | by Moses.' The book was carried to the king, who, having heard some part of it read, rent his robes in dread of the curses denounced against a wicked people, and immediately sent the high priest, and some other of his chief officers, to Huldah the prophetess to inquire i.) But then the question is, whether the people of Judah sacrificed these horses to the sun, as it is certain that the Armeni. ans, Persians, and other nations did, or only led them out in state every morning, to meet and salute the sun at its rising. The ancients had a notion likewise, that the sun itself was carried about in a chariot; and therefore chariots, as well as horses, were dedicated to it. Since then we find these horses and chariots standing so near together, the horses, we may suppose, were designed to draw the chariots, and the chariots to carry the king and his other great officers, who were idolaters of this kind, out at the east gate of the city every morning, to salute and adore the sun at its coming above the horizon. -Bochart's Hieroz, part. 1. b. xi. c. 10. a The Jews will tell us, that, on one side of the grave, where the prophet of Judah and the prophet of Bethel lay together, there grew nettles and thistles, on the other, myrtles, and other odoriferous plants, signifying that a true and false prophet lay there; and that this raised the king's curiosity to inquire whose that sepulchre was; but there is no ground for this fabulous fancy. The king, we may suppose, espied a stone or a pillar more eminent than the rest, with the names of the persons that were buried under it, and this made him ask the question of the men of the city, that is, some of the old inhabitants that had escaped the captivity, and not any of those new-comers whom the king of Assyria had sent thither; for these could give no account of the ancient histories of the Israelites; neither can we suppose that the sepulchre itself, after so many years' standing, could have been distinguishable, had not some pious person or other, with an intent to perpetuate the memory of the thing, in each successive age, taken care to preserve and repair it (Mat. xxiii. 29.)—Le Clerc's and Patrick's Commentaries. 6 Whether it was the whole Pentateuch, or the book of Deuteronomy only, which the high priest found in the temple, it is generally agreed, that the part which Shaphan read to the king was taken out of Deuteronomy, and not without some probability, that the xxviiith, xxixth, and xxxth chapters were that portion of Scripture which the secretary, who, as we are told 2 Kings xxii. 8, had read the book before he brought it to the king, thought proper upon this occasion to turn to; for therein is contained a renewal of the covenant, which Moses, as mediator, had made between God and the people of Israel at mount Horeb; and therein are those threats and terrible comminations to the transgressors of the law, whether prince or people, which affected Josiah so much; and which Moses had given the Levites to put on the side of the covenant, that it might be there for a witness' against the transgressors of it, (Deut. xxxi. 25, 26.)— Calmet's Commentary. This is the only mention we have of this prophetess, and of the Lord; who returned them in answer, that the judgments threatened in the book of the law would not be long before they fell upon the kingdom of Judah; but that, because the king had expressed so deep a concern upon hearing the denunciation of them, their execution should be delayed till after his death.' The good king, however, in order to appease the wrath of God, called together a solemn assembly of all the elders and people of Judah and Jerusalem; and going with them to the temple, he caused the law of God there to be distinctly read; and when that was done, both he and all the people entered into a covenant to observe all that was contained in it. After this he made another progress round the kingdom of Judah and Samaria, to destroy every the least remainder of idolatry that he could meet with; and when the season of the next passover was come, had it kept with such exactness and solemnity, as had never been observed from the days of Samuel the prophet to that time. In a word, this excellent prince did all that in him lay to atone for the sins of the people, and appease the wrath of God; but his decree, for the removal of Judah into a certainly it makes much to her renown, that she was consulted d The words of the text are,-'Surely there was not held such a passover, from the days of the judges, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, and of the kings of Judah,' (2 Kings xxiii. 22.) which, taken in a literal sense, must denote, that this passover, which was celebrated by two tribes only, was more numerous, and more magnificent, than all those that were observed in the days of David and Solomon, in the most happy and flourishing state of the Jewish monarchy, and when the whole twelve tribes were met together, to solemnize that feast. It may not be amiss there fore to allow, that, in these expressions, there is a kind of auxesis or exaggeration, not unusual in sacred, as well as in proface authors. For nothing is more common than to say, "never was so much splendour and magnificence seen," when we mean mo more, than that the thing we speak of was very splendid and magnificent; unless we suppose with some, that a preference i given to this passover above all the rest, in respect of the exact observation of the rites and ceremonies belonging to it, which, a other times, were performed according to custom, and severa things either altered or omitted; whereas at this, every thing was performed according to the prescribed form of the law, from which, since the finding of this authentic copy of it, Josiah enjoined them not to vary one tittle.-Calmet's and Le Clerc's Commentaries. [What distinguished this passover from all others before it, was doubtless the regularity with which it was observed, together with the zeal and devotion of those who were engaged in it. The words of the text do not therefore apply to the number present, but to the manner in which the solemnity was kept, and the spirit which animated the worshippers.]-Er. e Though Josiah was doubtless sincere in what he did, and omitted nothing to restore the purity of God's worship, wherever his power extended; yet the people had still a hankering after A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. land of their captivity, was passed, irrevocably passed; | to obstruct his passage. The Egyptian king hearing of and therefore when Pharaoh Necho a king of Egypt de- this, sent ambassadors desiring him to desist, declaring sired to pass through Judea, in order to go and attack that he came not to invade his territories, but purely to Charchemish," a city belonging to the king of Babylon, do himself justice on the king of Babylon; and assuring and situate upon the Euphrates, Josiah would by no him withal, that what he did in this case was by the ormeans consent to it; but getting together his forces, der and appointment of God. Josiah, however, thought posted himself in the valley of Megiddo, on purpose himself no way concerned to believe him; and therefore on Necho's marching up to the place where he was posted to receive him, a battle immediately ensued, wherein the Egyptian archers, discovering Josiah, though he had disguised himself before the action began, plied that quarter of the army where he fought so very warmly with their arrows, that at last receiving a mortal wound from one of them, he was carried in another chariot d out of the battle to Jerusalem, where after a reign of one and thirty years, he died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his ancestors. the corruption of the former part of Manasseh's reign. They complied, indeed, with the present reformation; but this was only out of fear of incurring the king's displeasure, or of feeling the severity of his justice. Their hearts were not right towards God, as appears from the writings of the prophets that lived in those times; and therefore, seeing no sign of their repentance, God had no reason to reverse his decree.-Calmet's and Le Clerc's Commentaries. that a Pharaoh signifies no more, in the Egyptian language, than Γ king; and was therefore given to any one that sat upon throne: but Necho, according to Herodotus, was his proper name, though some will have it to be an appellative, which signifies lame, because this Pharaoh, as they suppose, had a lameness which proceeded from some wound he had received in the wars. The same historian tells us, that he was the son and successor of Psammetichus king of Egypt, and a man of a bold enterprising spirit; that he made an attempt to join the Nile and the Red Sea, by drawing a canal from one to the other: that though he failed in this design, yet, by sending a fleet from the Red Sea through the straits of Babel-Mandeb, he discovered the coasts of Africa, and, in this his expedition to the Euphrates, resolved to bid fair, by destroying the united force of the Babylonians and Medes, for the whole monarchy of Asia.—Prideaux's Connection, anto 610, and Marsham's Canon, æg. sæcul. 18. [This Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, whom Herodotus calls the son of Psammetichus, and represents as an enterprising hero, with which representation the Bible perfectly accords, is enumerated by Manetho as the sixth (Nechas II.) of the twenty-sixth Saitic dynasty. (Jahn's Heb. Commonwealth.) The account of the war carried on by Pharaoh Necho against the Jews and Babylonians, is confirmed by the recent discoveries of the late enterprising traveller Belzoni among the tombs of the Egyptian sovereigns. In one of the numerous apartments of the tomb of Psammethes or Psammis, the son of Pharaoh Necho, he found a sculptured group describing the march of a military and triumphal procession, with three different sets of prisoners, who are evidently Jews, Ethiopians, and Persians. The procession begins with four red men with white kirtles, followed by a hawk-headed divinity; these are Egyptians apparently released from captivity, and returning home under the protection of the national deity. Then follow four white men in striped and fringed kirtles, with black beards, and with a simple white fillet round their black | hair; these are obviously Jews, and might be taken for the portraits of those who, at this day, walk the streets of London. After them come three white men with smaller beards and curled whiskers, with double-spreading plumes on their heads, tattooed, and wearing robes or mantles spotted like the skins of wild beasts; these are Persians, or Chaldeans. Lastly, come four negroes with large circular ear-rings and white petticoats, supported by a bell over the shoulders; these are Ethiopians.]--Belzoni's Narrative, 4to, and Atlas of Plates, Nos. 4, 5, and 6.—ED. e The death of so excellent a prince was deservedly lamented by all his people; but by none more sincerely than by Jeremiah the prophet; who having a thorough sense of the greatness of the loss, as well as full foresight of the sore calamities which were afterwards to follow upon the whole kingdom of Judah, while his heart was full with a view of both these, wrote a song of lamentation f upon this mournful occasion; but that is city Magdol, obtained a great victory, and made himself master of Cadytis,' where the author plainly mistakes the Syrians for the Jews; Magdolum, a city in the Lower Egypt, for Megiddo; and Cadytis, for Kadesh, (in the Upper Galilee, by which he was to pass in his way to Charchemish;) or rather for the city of Jerusalem, which, in Herodotus's time might be called by the neighbouring nations Cadyta or Cadyscha, that is, the holy city; since, even to this day, it is called by the eastern people Al-huds, which is plainly both of the same signification and original.Calmet's Dictionary under the word Kadesh, and Prideaux's Connection, anno 610. d It was the custom of war in former times for great officers to have their led horses, that it one failed they might mount another. The kings of Persia, as Quintus Curtius informs us, had horses attending their chariots, which, in case of any accident, they might make to; and, in like manner, we may presume, that when it became a mighty fashion to fight in chariots, all great captains had an empty one following them, into which they might betake themselves if any mischance befell the other.Bochart's Hieroz, part 1. c. 2 and 9. e The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus has given us his encomium in these words:-" All, except David, and Hezekias, and Josias, were defective. They forsook the law of the Most High; even the kings of Judah failed. But the remembrance of Josias, is like the composition of the perfume, that is made by the art of the apothecary: it is as sweet as honey in all mouths, and as music at a banquet of wine. He behaved himself uprightly in the conversion of the people, and took away the abomination of iniquity. He directed his heart unto the Lord, and in the time of the ungodly, he established the worship of God.' -Ecclus. xlix. 1, &c. f The Jews were wont to make lamentations, or mournful songs, upon the death of great men, princes, and heroes, who had distinguished themselves in arms, or by any civil arts had merited well of their country. By an expression in 2 Chron. xxxv. 25, behold they are written in the Lamentations,' one may infer, that they had certain collections of this kind of com b Geographers make no mention of this city under this name; but it is very probably the same with what the Greeks and Latins call Cercusium or Cercesium, which was situated on the angle formed by the conjunction of the Chaboras or Chebar, and the Euphrates. Isaiah x. 9, speaks of this place as if Tiglath-Pileser had made a conquest of it, and Necho, perhaps, now was going to retake it, as we find he did; but Jeremiah informs us, (ch. xlvi. 1, 2.) that in the fourth year of Jehoiachim king of Judah, it was taken and quite destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.-position. The author of the book of Samuel has preserved those Calmet's Comment., and Wells' Geog. of the Old Test. vol. iii. e Megiddo was a city in the half tribe of Manasseh, not far from the Mediterranean Sea, which way Necho was to pass with his army, in order to go into Syria, and thence to the Euphrates. In the valley adjoining to this place Josiah was slain, while he was at the head of his army,' as Josephus tells us, and riding up and down to give orders from one wing to the other.' This action Herodotus makes mention of when he tells us, 'that Nechos king of Egypt having fallen upon the Syrians, near the which David made upon the death of Saul and Jonathan, of Abner and Absalom: but this mournful poem, which the disconsolate prophet made upon the immature death of good Josiah, we nowhere have; which is a loss the more to be deplored because, in all probability, it was a master-piece in its kind: since never was there an author more deeply affected with his subject, or more capable of carrying it through all the tender sentiments of sorrow and compassion.-Calmet's Commentary, and Preface on the Lamentations of Jeremiah. A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. lost; and the other, which goes under his name, and is | under his name; so Raphael, being sent by God in 1 still remaining, was composed upon the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. CHAP. II.-Difficulties Obviated, and Objections Answered. form and appearance of a young man, was in that cap city to act and speak as if he had been such. Norv there any fallacy in his assuming the name of Azari which signifies God's help or assistance, since he manifestly sent for this very purpose, that he might a guide and assistance to Tobias in his journey; therefore very prudently concealed his quality of angel, that he might more conveniently execute his c mission. So that hitherto there is no incongruity in whole narration, if we can but have a farther acco why the smoke of the fish's liver and heart should of an efficacy to put the evil spirit to flight. 6 Those who are of opinion, that demons, or angels, were invested with certain material forms, whe in they snuffed up the perfumes, and feasted themsel upon the odours of the incense and sacrifices that w offered to them, have an easy way of solving this d THAT the dung of swallows is of a very hot and caustic quality, and when dropt into the eye, must needs be injurious to the sight, as being apt to cause an inflammation, and thereby a concretion of humours, which in process of time may produce a white film that will obstruct the light from the optic nerves; and that the gall of a fish, especially of the fish called Callionymus, is of excellent use to remove all such specks and obstructions to the sight, we have the testimony of some of the greatest men, physicians and naturalists, to produce in confir-culty, by supposing that the smell of the burned hearti mation of this part of Tobit's history. That good angels are appointed by God to be the guardians of particular men, and in execution of this their office, do frequently assume human shapes, to guide them in their journeys, and to deliver them from all dangers, is a doctrine as ancient as the patriarch Jacob's time, embraced by Christians, and believed by the wisest heathens; and that every man, in like manner, has an evil angel, or genius, whereof some preside over one vice, and some over another; insomuch that there are demons of avarice, demons of pride, and demons of impurity, &c., each endeavouring to ensnare the person he attends with a complexional temptation, is another position that has been almost generally received, 3 not only in the Jewish and Christian, but in the Pagan theology likewise; and therefore thus far the history of Tobit can be no novel or romance. 3 That good angels have a superior power and control over the bad, and by the divine authority can curb and restrain their malice, which is all that we need understand by their binding them up,' is evident from a passage in the Revelations very similar to what we read here concerning Raphael and Asmodeus: I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more' and that this good angel, personating an Israelite, and calling himself Azarias, the son of Ananias,' was not guilty of any lie or prevarication, is plain from cases of the like nature. For as the picture is usually called by the person it represents, and he who in tragedy acts the part of Cato, does, for that time, go Galen, de Simplic. Medicament. Facult. b. x. c. 12. Elian. b. xiii. c. 4. Rhasis. b. ix. c. 27. Pliny, b. xxvii. c. 11. Gesner. Hist. Animal. b. iii. Aldrovand. Ornitholog, b. xvii. Vales, de Sacra Philosoph. c. 42. * Gen. xlviii. 16. Ps. xxxiv. 7. 15. Hesiod. Oper. et Dies. b. i. Apuleius, de Deo Socratis. vi. c. 19. Mat. xviii. 10. Acts xii. See Buxtorf. Synag. Jud. c. 10. Basnag. Hist. des Juif. b. 1 Pet. v. S. liver of the fish was offensive to Asmodeus, even as t pretend, 8 that in some herbs, plants, stones, and of natural things, there is a certain virtue to drive at demons, and to hinder them from coming into sud determinate place. The Chaldeans, among whom book of Tobit was wrote, and the Israelites, for wh use and instruction it was wrote, might both be of opinion :-That demons, as not absolutely divested all matter, were capable of the same sensations and i pressions that belonged to corporeal substances; therefore in accommodation to the vulgar idea and p judice of the people, the author of this history m express himself, as though the expulsion of this e spirit was effected by a natural cause, the smoke off fish, even though, at the same time, he sufficiently in mates, that it was by a divine power that it came to pa because we find the angel thus enjoining Tobias, ° ́ wh thou shalt come to thy wife Sara, rise up both of ye and pray to God, who is merciful, who will pity y and save you.' Upon the contrary supposition, namely, that d demon was a being incorporeal, and this is the suppo tion concerning the angelical nature which general prevails, we may safely conclude, that the smoke of t fish's entrails could have no direct and physical e upon him; that his fleeing away therefore was occasion by a supernatural power, in the exercise of which, th angel appointed to attend Tobias, was the principal i strument; 10 that he ordered the burning of the f entrails as a sign when the evil spirit, by his superi power, should be chased away; or in the same sens that our blessed Saviour spread clay upon the eyes the man that was born blind, and ordered him to was in the pool of Siloah, namely, not as the cause, but th proof of his cure; and that he sent him away 11 into the uttermost parts of Egypt,' that is, into the deserts of th Upper Egypt, because our Saviour intimates that sud is the usual habitation of evil spirits, when he represe them, 12 as walking through dry places, seeking res and finding none.' RON. 641 iah the high the time of Pentateuch, uteronomy; Moses com ne ancient se, namely, very seven y emergent he learned. Chronicles he assures found, was ,' and con command, Covenant.' predecescontent to subjects to ad destroy here meet eft for the discover minations any such deed, that and from at he had his own ected the xxi. 26. despise the ed in fact, irs to have tury; and uthor ever -Bishop ndeavourvas sacred ; scarcely e law that Manasseh, the law, he whole. to restore ave done reign of do every to all the from the itinerant sent his 1 he sent the cities he Lord ny thing t be this, ghteenth came to he pure eighteen ⚫ simple renewed hich he ad being ts being nperfect had been oned on Fublished by Klackie & Son Glasgow. |