A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.

Having thus destroyed the city and temple, Nebuzaradan made all the people that he found in the place captives. Some of the chief of these, such as Seraiah the high priest, Zephaniah a the second priest, and about seventy others, he carried to Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar caused them all to be put to death. The poorer and labouring part of the people, such as could till the ground, and dress the vineyards, he left behind him, and made Gedaliah their governor; but as for all the rest, he carried them directly away to Babylon; only Jeremiah, of whom Nebuchadnezzar had given him charge to take particular care, he not only took out of prison when he first came to Jerusalem, but as the rest were upon their departure, gave him his option, whether he would go with him to Babylon, where he should be maintained very plentifully at the king's charge, or else remain in

A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. history to be transacted; and that they were really thus archers, which even Herodotus himself makes to be the transacted we have the concurring testimony both of the fate, not of Dejoces the father, but of his son Phraortes, Jewish and Christian church, who, though they deny the who, having subdued the Persians, as he tells us, and book a place in the number of their sacred and divine made himself master of almost all Asia, was not content writings, yet did always esteem it one of their apocry-therewith, but coming at last to attack Nineveh and the phal pieces, and a true and incontested history, well | Assyrian empire, was overcome, and killed in the contrived for the edification of the vulgar, though not of bold attempt. authority enough to determine any controversy in matters of religion.

1 Josephus indeed makes no mention either of the book of Judith, or of her famous exploit in killing Ho-might leave the completion of it to his son, who being a lofernes; but his silence is no argument against what we assert, because he nowhere professes to take notice of every thing that occurred in the Jewish republic; on the contrary, he openly declares that his purpose was to relate only such things as were recorded in the books which were originally written in Hebrew, and declared canonical, which that of Judith never was.

Nor is there any great trespass against the truth of history in this author's asserting that Arphaxad built the walls, the towers, and the gates of Ecbatan; since by Arphaxad he does not mean the Dejoces in Herodotus, but his son Phraortes, who succeeded him in the kingdom of Media: for that he must mean so, is plain, latter; for they are left out of that pedigree, though they were a The high priests of the family of Eli are instances of the because he gives us to understand, that this Arphax-high priests: and those of the true race who were excluded by

A. M. 3391. A. C. 610; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.

strengthen with a girdle,' that is, to invest with the | harass and fatigue his men in fighting against rocks and pontifical habit and office; and therefore, his being a inaccessible mountains, but preserve them fresh and unfather to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house foiled, for their great and more important expedition of Judah, and his having the key of the house of David against Egypt. laid upon his shoulder; so, he should open, and none should shut, and he should shut and none should open,' does very well agree with the part which Joakim is said to have acted in the book of Judith. For though the supreme power was doubtless in Manasseh, yet, since his return from the captivity, having either sequestered himself from public business, or 1 being engaged in the defence of his country in some other place, he might intrust the management of his affairs in Jerusalem to the high priest, who, having such an amplitude of power, and acting as chief minister in that place, might be well enough mentioned in this transaction of Judith, 2 and in the deputation of the elders from Jerusalem to thank her for it, without naming his master at all.

What the manners and customs of the Persians were we may in some measure learn from the Greek historians, who, upon the dissolution of that monarchy by the conquest of Alexander, were obliged to say something of a people whom they succeeded in the dominion of the east; but, as these historians did not write till after the kingdom of Persia was destroyed, they have taken little or no notice of other Oriental nations; and therefore what affinity there might be in their manners and usages, we cannot tell; and 3 consequently must not blame the author of the book of Judith, for making Holofernes act out of character, as we think, unless we know how far the customs of the Assyrians and Persians did conform or disagree.

Herein, however, we know, that all Oriental nations were unanimous, namely, in affecting pomp and grandeur; and therefore (whether it was a Persian custom or no) we need not wonder, that we find Holofernes, the captaingeneral of the Assyrian army, 4 resting upon his bed, under a canopy, which was woven with purple, and gold, and emeralds, and precious stones; and when Judith was introduced, coming out before his tent, a with silver lamps going before him.' We need not wonder at the rapidity of his conquest, since, doubtless, he had several lieutenant-generals under him, who, with strong detachments from the grand army, might, in separate bodies, invade all the provinces which the historian mentions; and, since he nowhere met with any opposition until he came into Palestine, but expected a great deal in Egypt, be thought it advisable to halt, for some time, in the neighbourhood of Bethulia, and to put his men into quarters of refreshment, until the forces which he had detached upon sundry expeditions were come up, and had joined him. And for this reason he was not so eager to press the siege of Bethulia, that he might not

The truth is, the king of Nineveh was resolved not only to subdue the several nations from the Euphrates to Ethiopia, but intended likewise to oblige them all to 5 adore and acknowledge him only to be god; 6 and therefore the Bethulians, who could not, without impiety, and a renunciation of their religion, submit to the dominion of such a king, had reason to promise themselves the assistance of God, in the prosecution of this war; and Judith, who found herself under a divine and irresistible impulse to go upon so adventurous an exploit, had good reason to hope for success against a prince, who had declared himself an enemy to the God of heaven, and an usurper of that honour and adoration which belonged to him alone.

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, let us serve other gods which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him:' and, in pursuance of this law, much more might Judith, or any other inhabitant of Bethulia, whom God had inspired with the like courage and magnanimity, endeavour to counterplot the designs of any person, who, in an hostile manner, should come, not only to invade their civil rights and liberties, but to extirpate their religion; and, instead of enticing, to compel them by force of arms, to receive a form of idolatry, which neither they nor their fathers knew.

Many things may be alleged against Judith's method of proceeding in this affair, but they are most of them reducible to the common stratagems of war, which not only the law of arms, but the commands of God in some cases, and the examples of several of the best men in sacred history, have declared to be allowable. What comes not under this denomination, we shall not pretend

b How great soever the folly and impiety was, in desiring to

pass for a god, yet the king of Nineveh was not the only prince that we find infected with it. The flatterers of Darius the Median proposed to him to make a decree that, under pain of being cast into the den of lions, no one should dare to ask a petition of any god or man, but of him only, for the space of thirty days, (Dan. vi. 7.) When Alexander the Great took it into his head, to exact the same divine honours of his people that they had formerly paid to the kings of Persia his predecessors, he found people about him base and prostitute enough to commend the design, and to maintain, that thus to advance kings above the rank of mortal man, was not only a pious, but a prudent and advantageous thing; for so the historian expresses it: "That the Persians, not only through motives of piety but of wisdom, wor2 Judith xv. 8. shipped their kings as gods, for they deemed majesty to be a 3 Calmet's Preface on the book of Judith. * Judith x. 21, 22. bulwark to the welfare of the nation," (Quint. Curt. b. viii.) The a Holofernes may be thought, in this piece of state, to imitate Egyptians had their princes in the like veneration, and looked the custom of the Persians, among whom it was usual to carry upon them as highly raised above the condition of other men, fire before their kings, as it was afterward done before the Roman but the Greeks, it must be owned, held all this baseness and emperors, and is at present before the emperor of the Turks; abject flattery in a just detestation, insomuch that the Athenians but the reason of this might be no more, than either that Judith put Timagoras to death, for having prostrated himself before the and her maid were apprehended, and brought to Holofernes, be- king of the Persians; and Sperchius and Bulis, two Lacedemofore it was quite day, or that the inner apartment of his tent was nians, though then in a state of captivity, could not be brought so very dark, that he had lights continually burning in it.-Cal-to pay that adoration to Artaxerxes, which he required of every met's Commentary on Judith x. 22.

'Prideaux's Connection, anno 655.

one that approached him.-Plut, in Artax.

1

66

A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. to vindicate; for the notion of mental reservations and but that many of the dificulties which at present seem ironical speeches, which are not allowed in common insurmountable, would then easily subside and sink into conversation, are but the poor subterfuges which com - | nothing. The plain truth is, there was scarce ever a mentators have used to apologise for the conduct that history written" according to our learned Prideaux`s * they can by no means justify. observation, "but what in the very next age will seem to have inconsistencies enough in it as to time, place, and other circumstances, when the memory of men concerning them begins to fail ; and therefore we may be much more apt to blunder, when we take our view at the distance of above two thousand years, and have no other light to direct us to our object, but such glimmerings, from broken scraps of history, as are in effect next to nothing.”

The history, indeed, represents this Judith as a woman of great courage; but it nowhere intimates that she was without faults. The manner of her preparation for the undertaking, and the success wherewith it was attended, may make us presume, that its design was originally from God; but then the continued train of falsehood and dissimulation wherewith it was carried on, must needs persuade us, that the means of conducting it was left to the woman, who, on this occasion, has given us a very remarkable specimen of the cunning and sagacity, the guile and artifice, of her sex.

The like is to be said of the several seeming absurdities that may be observed in the writings and behaviour of the prophets :-That were we sufficiently acquainted with the style and manner of writing that was in use in those days, and especially in the eastern countries, we should think it no strange thing to find them expressing themselves by types and figures, parabolical representa

about, so it is, that mankind have all along been marvel-
lously taken with story and picture. 5 These excite the
curiosity of our nature; they tempt us to learn, help us
to remember, and convey instruction to the mind, in a
more pleasing and effectual manner than plain documents
can; and hence it came to pass, that a great part of the
learning of the wise men of the east consisted in 'pro-
phecies, in subtle and dark parables, and in the secrets
of grave sentences,' as the author of the book of Eccle-
siasticus has branched it out; 7 <
for to understand a pro-
verb and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and
their dark sayings,' was the very best description that
Solomon himself could give of wisdom. Among the
ancients, indeed, mythology was in the highest esteem.
The Egyptians, who were in great reputation for learn-
ing, delivered their notions in hieroglyphics; and from
them the Greeks took the mode of couching their mean-
ing in fable.
9
Hesiod, who contends with Homer for
antiquity, is supposed by Quintilian to be the author
of the fables which go under the name of Esop; but,
however this be, the very supposition of his being so,
makes it probable that he did write fables, as, perhaps,
most men of learning and note in those days accustom-
ed themselves to this form of writing.

One thing, however, may be said, and that without any forced explication, in favour of her conduct:-That her answer to the eunuch's suggestion she might design for no more than a common compliment, which the situations, and emblematical actions. For, however it comes tion of her affairs, at that time, obliged her to make. She might perceive, very likely, the bad design which the Assyrian general had upon her; but she did not think herself concerned to discover that she perceived it. She pretended, in some measure, to be ignorant of it; and to pretend an ignorance of what is proposed, when the thing is naughty and will not bear examination, is a point of modesty as well as prudence: as, where it will admit of a double construction, there to take it in the better sense, is even reputed an act of candour and good breeding. 'Let not this fair damsel fear,' says the old pander, 'to come to my lord, and to be honoured in his presence, and drink wine, and be merry with us, and be made this day as one of the daughters of the Assyrians, who serve in the house of Nabuchodonosor.' How the daughters of Assyria, who served in this capacity, were used, Judith very probably had been informed: but, since the eunuch seemed to put it on the foot of a great favour and honour done her, she could not do less than return him a compliment; but then we all know, 3 that the offers of service, which, upon every occasion, we are so apt to make to one another, and those expressions of submission and respect, which so commonly pass among us, are not to be taken in a literal sense, because they always imply a tacit condition; and therefore the answer which the historian puts in Judith's mouth, surely, whatever pleaseth him, I will do speedily,' will fairly admit of this construction, whatever Holofernes shall desire of me, so far as it is consistent with my duty, my honour, and my religion, I will not fail to do.'

Thus we have endeavoured to satisfy most of the popular objections, and to reconcile most of the seeming inconsistencies, that occur in the history of Judith; and if there still remain any that cannot sufficiently be cleared up, they ought, in justice, to be imputed to our ignorance and want of better information. Had we the ancient books of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah, to which we are so often referred in Scripture, or had we the histories of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, and Egyptians, (with whom the Jewish nation had so long an intercourse,) perfect and entire, it is not to be doubted,

1 Calmet's Commentary on Judith x. 13. Calmet's Preface on the book of Judith.

3 Ibid.

10 But, besides this parabolical way of writing which was in great vogue among the ancients, and to which the Jews, by a kind of natural genius, were wonderfully inclined, the people of the east had a way of expressing themselves by actions as well as words, and, to inforce the matter they were upon, would frequently make use of outward and visible signs and representations. "This, our learned Mr Mede shows, was the practice of the Indians, Persians, and Egyptians; and, even among Romans, who were a people that used great modesty of style, and more gravity in their actions, than many other nations, it was a customary thing in their orations and pleadings, to use all arts to raise the passions, by actions and representations as well as words; insomuch," that

4 Connection, anno 655.

the

"Prov. i, 6.

s Reeve's Sermons. 6 Ecclus. xxxix. 1, &c.
Jenkins' Reasonableness of Christianity, vol. ii. c. 6.
9 Quintil. Instit. b. v. c. 11.

10 Lightfoot's Heb. and Talmud. Exercit. in Mat, xiii. 3.
11 Comment, in Apocal. part. 1. p. 470. 12 Cic. pro P. Sextio

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they would frequently hang up the picture of the thing | salem, can hardly be understood in a sense altogether they were to speak to. Cicero tells us of himself, that literal; because it is not probable, either, that the amhe sometimes took up a child, and held it in his arms to bassadors would take the yokes at his hands, or carry move compassion; and to excite horror and indignation, them to their respective masters; but then, as yokes and nothing was more common, than for the accusers to pro-bonds are common figures in Scripture, to denote captiduce, in open court, a bloody sword, or the garments of vity, and the miseries that attend it, his sending the the wounded; to show the bones that had been taken yokes and bonds, may signify no more, 5 than his deout of the wound, or the scars that it had left behind | claring, from God, the fate of these princes, when the it: "The power of these things is usually great," says king of Babylon was let loose upon them. Only it must Quintilian,"directing the attention of men to the sub-be observed, that the prophet might really make some

ject in question;" for it can hardly otherwise happen, but that by this means they should fix the attention of their hearers, when, at one and the same time, they speak both to their eyes and ears.

of these yokes and bonds, (as the Scripture says expressly, that he put one upon himself,) to enliven the idea, and make the impression of what he was to say more strong and emphatical. For these ornamental figures, and affecting images interspersed with it, added new force and dignity to the prophet's message, made it more awful and solemn to the delivery, and gave it the advantage of a deeper and more durable impression.

In like manner, again, the whole affair of this prophet's girdle, his carrying it to the Euphrates, hiding it in a rock, and, at such a determinate time, going for it again, and finding it quite rotten and spoiled, can hardly be taken in a literal sense; because the vast a distance of the place, and trivialness of the errand, as well as the impossibility of getting out of Jerusalem, if it was then

From these few remarks, it appears in general, that the figurative expressions of the prophets, their actions, and types, and parables, were not incongruous to the customs of the times and places where they lived, and yet very proper means to give a lively and affecting representation of the message they had to deliver; and so proceed we to the passages which seem to give disgust. To take several of these in their literal sense, would be an effectual way to disparage the divine precept, which, according to this acceptation, would put the prophet upon acting in a manner quite inconsistent with common prudence; and therefore interpreters are gen-invested by the Babylonians, make strongly against it; erally agreed, that the things of this kind, which will not come under a literal construction, were either transacted in vision, that is, the prophet in a dream, or some other deliquium, imagined that he did such and such things, and then related them to the people; or that they were parables, which God dictated to the prophet, and the prophet recited to the people; only it must be observed, * that the literal interpretation of a text always claims the preference, if there be not some weighty reason against it, or some intimation in the text itself, that the words are figurative and enigmatical.

The prophet Jeremiah is ordered by God, to take the wine-cup of his fury at his hand, and to carry it up and down, far and near Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and the kings and princes thereof: to Pharaoh jking of Egypt, and his servants, princes, and people; to all the Arabians, and kings of the land of Uz; to the kings of the land of the Philistines, Edom, Moab, and Ammon; to the kings of Tyre and Sidon, and of the isles beyond the sea, Dedan, Tema, and Buz; to the kings of Zimri, of the Medes, and Persians, and all the kings of the north.' Now, since it was morally impossible for the prophet to visit all these kings and nations in person, and the nature of the thing would not admit of any real performance, it could be no otherwise done than in vision. 'The cup of God's wrath,' is a common figure in Scripture, to denote the severity of his judgments; and therefore, when the prophet says, that ‘he took the cup at the Lord's hand, and made all the nations drink thereof,' he can mean no more, than that he prophesied against these several nations, and, by virtue of the spirit of foreknowledge which God had imparted to him, pronounced their doom.

In like manner, his sending yokes and bonds to several kings, whose ambassadors were then at Jeru

and therefore we may suppose, that all this was transacted in the prophet's imagination only; that, in the night-time, God sent upon him a vision, wherein all this series of things seemed to be performed by him, to imprint it the deeper upon his understanding, namely, that the kingdom of Judah, which was once as nearly united to God as the girdle is to a man's loins, should be utterly ruined and destroyed; and though the river Euphrates be at a wide distance from the prophet's place of abode, yet, in the vision, which is never confined to places, it might be more aptly made choice of than any other, thereby to denote to the Jews, that over that river they were to be carried captive to the city of Babylon.

The short of the matter is,-Several things which the prophets set down as matters of fact, might not be actually done, but only represented as done, to make the more lively impression upon their readers and hearers. Nay, there are several commands which God gives Ezekiel in particular, such as, his lying for 390 days on one side,' which was next to a thing impossible, his baking his bread with man's dung,' which was a thing unseemly, and his shaving his head and beard,' which, as he was a priest, 6 was a thing expressly forbidden him, that the prophet is never once said to have performed, nor were they indeed given him with an intent that he should perform them, but only relate them to the people, and so

5 Henric. Michael Bib. Heb. notes on the passage. 6 Lev. xxi. 5.

a The learned Bochart has invented a new solution of this difficulty. He supposes, that as it was a common thing for the initial letter to be dropped, in the names of places and persons, the Hebrew word Phrath may be supposed to stand for Ephrath or Ephratah, which is Bethlehem, about five or six miles distant from Jerusalem; by which means the prophet's journey is greatly shortened, and the pains of going thither once again is not much. But whether this solution, as ingenious as it is, will bear the test, is left to the examination of the critics.-Calmet's Commentary, and Scripture Vindicated, in locum.