A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7--xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA i—v.

a

suspending the agency of the fire, walked in the midst | gan to operate; for, when Nebuchadnezzar understood,c of the furnace with them, blessing and praising God; that the subjects of Pharaoh Hophra had revolted from so that when the king, who staid to see the execution, him, and declared Amasis, an officer of his court, their perceived it, he started up on a sudden, and, coming king, he took the advantage of the intestine troubles nearer to the mouth of the furnace, called upon them to ensuant thereupon, and having in a short time overcome forth, which they instantly did, in the presence of run the country from Migdol to Syene, that is, from him and all his attendants, without so much as an hair one end of Egypt to the other, he plundered and laid it of their heads being singed, or the least smell of fire waste; and of the Jews, who, after the murder of Gedaabout them. Convinced by the greatness of this miracle, liah, had fled thither, some he slew, and others he carthe king himself glorified the God of Israel, published ried away captive to Babylon; so that scarce any escapan edict in favour of the Jewish religion, and gave these ed but such as fled out of Egypt, and afterwards setthree glorious confessors still higher promotion in the tled themselves in their own land, at the end of the capprovince of Babylon. tivity. e

Not long after this, the judgments which the prophet Jeremiah had denounced against his countrymen the Jews, when they rejected the counsel of God, and fled into Egypt for protection, (as they vainly thought,) be

1 Jer. xliv. 27, 28.

Having thus reduced the king of Egypt, and constituted Amasis his viceroy, he returned to Babylon, where he had another dream, which gave him fresh disquiet. This dream he very well remembered; and therefore he sent for his own magicians first, in hopes that they could have interpreted it; but when he met with no satisfaction from them, he was forced to have recourse to Daniel again;

upon some have thought that this prince, having little or no knowledge of the true religion, imagined that he saw some demi-and thus, upon his entrance, he accosted him: god, an Apollo, a Hercules, a Mercury for instance, the son of a superior god walking with the three Hebrew youths in the "I saw a tree of a prodigious bigness, which seemfiery furnace. The notion, it must be owned, agrees very welled to reach from earth to heaven. It was fair and with the ancient theology of the Greeks, to which that of the full of fruit; yielded shelter to the beasts and fowls, Chaldeans had no small resemblance; but as angels are some- and sustenance to all flesh. I saw g likewise an angel times in Scripture called the sons of God,' (Job i. 6, and xxxviii. 7.) and most nations had not only a belief of their existence, but Ligh conceptions likewise of their power, the king explains himself what he means by the son of God,' when, in joy for their deliverance, he cries out, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him!' (Dan. iii. 28.) For, as it is in the song of the three holy children, "the angel of the Lord came down into the oven, together with Azariah and his fellows, and smote the flame of the oven, and made the midst of the furnace as it had been a moist and whistling wind, so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them." [Instead of the son of God,' as we have it in Dan. iii. 25, Dr Boothroyd translates a son of God,' and Dr A. Clarke has the following remarks on the passage :-"What notion could this idolatrous king have of the Lord Jesus Christ? for so the place is understood by thousands; bar elohim signifies a son of the gods, that is, a divine person or angel; and so the king calls him in ver. 28: 'God hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants.' And though even from this some still contend that it was the angel of the covenant, yet the Babylonish king knew just as much of the one as he did of the other. No other ministration was necessary; a single angel from heaven was quite sufficient to answer this purpose, as that which stopped the mouths of the lions when Daniel was cast into their den."]—Dr Clarke's Commentary on Dan. iii. 25.-ED.

a According to the vulgar Latin edition, in the third chapter of Daniel, between the 23d and 24th verses, is added the Song of the three children; but being nowhere extant, either in the Hebrew or Chaldee language, and never received in the canon of holy writ by the Jewish church, or by the ancient Christians, our church has thought proper to place it among the apocryphal writings, where it stands next to the book of Baruch, though the church of Rome, by a decree of the council of Trent, (sess. 4.), has not only given it, but the history of Susanna likewise, and of Bel and the Dragon (which most of the ancients looked upon as mere fables,) a place among the canonical Scriptures. The Song itself consists of two parts; a prayer, and a thanksgiving. The prayer is a devout confession of the sins of the people, and acknowledgment of God's righteousness, in bringing their captivity, and other calamities, upon them. And the thanksgiving is a solemn excitation of all creatures whatever, but more especially of the three Hebrew children, who were thus saved from the hands of death, to bless the Lord, praise him, and exalt him above all for ever.'

"As if the flame itself (according to the expression of Josephus) had been conscious of the injustice of their sentence, and suspended the very nature of its consuming quality in favour of the innocent."-Jewish Antiquities, b. x. c. 11.

c The occasion of this revolt is to this effect related by Herodotus,- That Pharaoh Hophra, whom he calls Apries, having lost a great army in Libya, and, as some imagined, on purpose, that, being rid of them, he might with more ease and security govern the rest, fell under the resentment of his subjects to such a degree, that several of them joined together in a body, and revolted from him; that, to appease and reduce them to their duty, he sent Amasis, one of the officers of his court, to them, but, instead of his persuading them, they prevailed with him to be their king; that hereupon Hophra sent Palerbamis, a person of the first rank, to arrest Amasis, and bring him with him; but, when he returned without being able to execute his commission, he commanded his ears aud his nose to be immedi ately cut off, which indignity, to a man of his worth and character, so exasperated the rest of his subjects, that they almost all forsook him; so that he was forced to hire an army of foreigners, wherewith he attempted to give Amasis battle not far from Memphis; but had the misfortune to be vanquished, taken prisoner, and carried to the city Sais, where he was strangled in his own palace.-Herod. b. i., and Diod. Sic., b. i. part 2.

d This is a city in the southern frontiers of Egypt, between Thebes and the great cataracts of the Nile, of which the ancients speak frequently, as the farthest part in Egypt of any note towards Ethiopia.-Calmet's Dictionary, under the word.

e These transactions probably took place before the erection of the goiden image, and the miraculous deliverance of the three children. See previous note by ED.

If It is very observable, that in the writings of the prophets, princes are frequently compared to trees, (Ezek. xvii. 5, 6, and xxxi. 3. Jer. xxii. 15. Ps. xxxvii. 35.) and it is the notion of Grotius, that a tree seen in a dream, according to the principles of the Indians, Persians, and Egyptians, denotes some great and excellent personage; but nothing is more precarious than these principles, or more uncertain than these observations, because in the dreams which come from God, he may represent an eminent person under a thousand different types, as well as that of a stately tree.-Calmet's Commentary on Dan, iv. 7.

g The words in our translation are, I saw a watcher,' which, as it came down from heaven, could be no other than an angel. The Chaldee word is nir, from whence St Jerome imagines, that the pagans derived their Iris, the messenger of the gods; and by some expressions in Dan, iv. 17, it looks as if the Chaldeans had a notion, for the king, we may suppose, speaks according to the common sentiments of the people, that these watchers, or holy ones in heaven, did constitute an assembly of judges, or were an order of blessed spirits, who took under their cognizance and decision the fate of men; for, by the decree of these watchers it was, that

A. M. 3417. A C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7—xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA i-Y. coming down from heaven, who cried with a loud voice, Hew down the tree, cut off the branches, shake off the leaves, scatter the fruit, and let all creatures depart from it; but let the stump remain in the earth, and bind it with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field, and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth: let his heart be changed from that of a man, and a beast's heart be given him, and let seven times pass over him."

His cessation from war, in which he had been long engaged, had by this time given an opportunity of finishing his stately buildings at Babylon; and upon the survey of these, as well as other monuments of his greatness, he became so intoxicated with pride and arrogance, that God, in punishment of his haughty mind, deprived him of his senses, and for exalting himself above the state of men reduced him to the condition of a beast.

For seven years he lived abroad in the fields, eating grass like an ox, and taking up his lodging on the ground in the open air. But at the expiration of this time, when he became sensible of God's superior power and dominion, his senses returned to him again. His kingdom was restored, and he re-instated in his former majesty; whereupon he made this solemn and grateful acknowledgment; And now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, and extol, and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment, and those that work in pride, he is able to abase, when he pleases.'

As soon as Daniel heard the dream, he was so affected with the dreadful judgments which it portended to the king, that he stood silent for the space of an hour; but being encouraged by the king to expound the thing to him, be it what it would, he addressed himself to him in these words:" The tree, O king, which thou sawest in thy dream, is thyself; for thy greatness reacheth unto the heavens, and thy dominions to the end of the earth: but the angel which came from heaven with orders to cut down the tree, denotes the decree of the Most High, which is determined against thee, namely, that thou shalt be dri- Upon the death of Nebuchadnezzar, (for he lived ven from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts not long after his restoration,) his son Evil-merodach of the field; thou shalt eat grass with the oxen, and be succeeded to the throne of Babylon, and to make some wet with the dew of heaven; that seven years shall pass amends for his father's hard usage of Jehoiachin, the capover thee, before thou comest to consider that God tive king of Judah, he released him, as was said before, ruleth over the kingdoms of men; and that, after such from an imprisonment that had lasted near thirty-seven a term, thou shalt be restored to thy kingdom again, years, and promoted him to great honour in his palace. which is the thing intimated by the stump of the tree that His reign however was but short; for his lusts and was ordered to be left. And now that thou hast heard wickednesses had, in the space of two years, made him the interpretation of this dream, permit me, O king, to so intolerable, that even his own relations conspired advise thee to atone for thy sins by an holy life, and by against him, and put him to death; whereupon Neriglissar, acts of mercy to the poor, and to recommend thyself his sister's husband, who was at the head of the conto the mercy of God, that he may prolong thy posterity." spiracy, reigned in his stead; and as Jehoiachin did not This was the advice of a faithful minister; but Ne-long survive him, Salathiel, his son, succeeded as nomibuchadnezzar, it is to be feared, had not the heart tonal prince of the Jews. Upon his accession to the pursue it.

the tree, in the vision, was ordered to be cut down.-Calmet's Commentary.

a The ambiguity of this expression, which the prophet, in his exposition of the dream, still adheres to, has occasioned a great variety of opinions concerning it. Some maintain, that, as the Persians distinguished their years into two seasons, winter and summer, the seven years of Nebuchadnezzar must be reckoned in this manner, which will therefore reduce them to the space of three years and a half. Dorotheus, in his Synopsis of the lives of the prophets and apostles, tells us, that God did indeed condemn Nebuchadnezzar to seven years' habitation with brutes, but that, at the prayers and intercessions of Daniel, the seven years were reduced to seven months. The word time, according to others, denotes no more than the space of a month; so that the king's disorder, of course, lasted no longer than seven months; whereof, according to their computation, for the first forty days he continued in his frenzy as a madman; in the forty days following he bewailed his offences, and in the last forty days he recovered by degrees from his infirmity: but all these are idle conjectures. A year was a common measure of time among the Chaldeans, especially in the chronicles of their kings; and, therefore, in this particular, we need no other interpreter for Daniel than Daniel himself, who, in sundry places of this prophecy, particularly in chap. xii. 7, has set a time and times, and the dividing, or half of a time, for the space of three years and a half.-Calmet's Dictionary under the word Nebuchadnezzar.

6 God delayed the execution of his threats against this prince, and gave him a whole year's reprieve, (chap. iv. 29,) to see if he would repent, and turn unto him: but perceiving that he still persisted in his crimes, as soon as the measure of his iniquity was full, he smote and reduced him to the condition of a beast. This is Theodoret's notion of the matter; but St Jerome rather thinks, that this king being terrified with the threats, and touch

'Dan, iv. 37.

ed with the exhortations of the prophet, began to set about his reformation, and by acts of charity and mercy, to reconcile himself to God, for which he obtained a delay of his punishment for a year's space; but that, instead of persevering in these good purposes, he suffered himself to fall into pride, upon the contemplation of the mighty works he had done, and so, by his vanity, lost what he had gained by his charity.-Calmet's Commentary, e This prince died in the year of the world 3442, and B. C. 562, according to Hales, A. M. 4850, and B. C. 561, after he had reigned from the death of his father, according to the Babylonish account, three and forty years. He was certainly one of the greatest princes that had appeared in the east for many years before him, and according to Megasthenes, (as he is cited by Josephus, Antiq. b. x. c. 11.) both for his enterprises and performances, far excelled even Hercules himself. The same historian (as he is quoted by Eusebius, Præp. b. ix. c. 41.) informs us, that, a little before his death, he foretold his subjects of the coming of the Persians, and their subduing the kingdom Babylon; but this he might gather from the prophet Daniel, and especially from the interpretation of his dreams.—Prideaus i Connection, anno 562.

dIt is not unlikely that Jehoiachin, being a favourite, fell with him; for that best agrees with Jeremiah's prophecies cocerning him, wherein it is denounced, (chap. xxii. 30,) that he 'should not prosper in his days;' which could not be so well verified of him, had he died in the full possession of all that pros perity to which Evil-merodach had advanced him.-Prideau's Connection, anno 559.

e Long after the loss of all authority, the Jews kept up the title of a king among them, and had a person descended of the house of David, who, by the name of the head of the captivity,' was acknowledged and honoured as a prince, and, as far as was consistent with the government they lived under, was invested with some sort of jurisdiction over them. Nay, to this very day,

A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7—xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA i—v.

a damp to the king's mirth, by causing a hand to appear upon the wall, which, in three words, wrote the sentence of his condemnation. The king saw the hand that wrote; and being exceedingly affrighted and troubled at it, he commanded all his wise men, magicians, and astrologers to be immediately called, that they might read the writing, and explain its meaning; but when none of them could do either, notwithstanding the great honours and presents which he offered them, at the instance of the e queen-mother, Daniel was sent for.

A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7—xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA ¡—v. offer of honours and presents, that he had done to his own magicians, if he would but explain the writing. Daniel modestly refused the offers he made him; but having undertaken to perform what he required of him, he first reproved him, with some freedom, for his ingratitude to God, who had advanced him to the rank of a sovereign, and for the profanation of the vessels which were consecrated to his service; and then proceeded to the interpretation of the words, which were these, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. "Mene," says he "which signifies number, As soon as he came into the king's presence, he d re- intimates, that the days, both of your life and of your ceived him very courteously, and made him the same reign, are numbered, or that you have but a short time to live. Tekel, which signifies weight, intimates, that in the heathen story, remarkable examples of this kind are the miserable end of the Phocians, who robbed the temple of Delphos, you have been weighed in the balance of God's justice, and were the occasion of that war, which was called from thence and found too light; and Upharsin, which signifies the holy war:' the destruction of the Gauls in their attempt fragment, intimates, that your kingdom shall be divided, upon the same temple; and of Crassus, who plundered the temple and given to the Medes and Persians;" which accordof Jerusalem, and that of the Syrian goddess; as these two lastingly came to pass; for that very night, in the midst of stories are related by Prideaux, part 2.-Louth's Commentary their feasting and revelling, the city was taken by sur

on Dan. v. 5.

e Daniel, in repeating the words, instead of Upharsin, puts in Peres; but they both signify the same thing.

f Cyrus had lain before the town to little or no purpose for the space of two years, when, understanding that a great annual feast was approaching, wherein the Babylonians, in honour of their idol Sheshach, were wont to spend the whole night in

a The writing very probably might be in a character unknown to the Chaldeans, as the old Hebrew, Phœnician, and Samaritan were; or if they were acquainted with the character, yet such is the genius of most of the oriental languages, where so little use is made of vowels, and where the pronunciation and sequel of the discourse generally determine the signification of the letters, that a man may be a perfect master of a language, and yet not able to read and comprehend a word, when it stands alone, and without any context, as it is in the case of Mene, Tekel, Uphar-revelling and drunkenness, he thought this no improper time to sin. A man, for instance, that understands the Hebrew tongue never so well, were he to meet dbr standing alone, would have much ado to read them, because, according to the manner that we pronounce them, the letters will admit of many different significations; and it is much the same in the Chaldee language, wherein the words we are now speaking of were wrote.-Calmet's Commentary on Dan. v. 7.

b The king's words are these: Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom,' (Dan. v. 7.) From whence it appears, that the kings of Babylon wore the same ornaments, and, in rewarding their favourites, gave the same marks of honours that the kings of Persia and their successors did. For purple, we find in several Greek authors, was the ordinary habit of the kings of Persia, and of the princes of their court that were in the highest posts of honour. The chain or collar of gold was one of the greatest marks of distinction that the Persian kings could bestow upon their subjects; and to be the third ruler of the kingdom,' was the same sublime office that Darius the Mede put Daniel in, (ch. vi. 1, 2.) when he constituted him one of the presidents over the hundred and twenty princes that he had made governors over provinces.-Xenophon's Cyropædia, b. 8; Diodorus, b. xviii; Josephus's Antiquities, b. xi. c. 6; Brisson on the kingdom of the Persians, b. i.

e In the 2d verse of the fifth chapter of Daniel, we read, that the king, his princes, his wives, and his concubines' were all at the feast, which he made for them; and yet in the 16th verse it follows, that the queen, upon hearing of the news of the handwriting, came into the banquet house; but then it must be observed, that this queen was not one of his wives, but Nitocris, his mother, and she seems there to be called the queen by way of eminence, because she had the regency of the kingdom under her son, for which her great wisdom duly qualified her. For this reason Herodotus speaks of her, as if she had been sovereign of the kingdom, in the same manner as Semiramis is said to have been, and attributes to her all those works about Babylon which other authors ascribe to her son.-Prideaux's Connect, anno 547. d And yet it is observable, that when he came into his presence, he asked him, 'art thou that Daniel?' which seems to imply, though he was one of the chief ministers of state, (Dan. v. 13.) the king did not know him; but this only shows, that Belshazzar was a man who minded nothing but his pleasures, and left all things else to the management of others; a conduct too often followed by such princes as think kingdoms made for nothing else but to serve their pleasures, and gratify their lusts! -Prideaux's Connection, anno 547.

attempt to surprise them. To this purpose, having posted one part of his men at the place where the river ran into the city, and another where it came out, with orders to enter by way of the chaunel, as soon as they found the river førdable: about the close of the evening he fell to work, broke down the dams, and turned aside the stream: so that, by the middle of the night, the river was so drained, that the parties according to their orders, entered the channel, and finding the gates leading down to the river open, by them they ascended into the city, and made directly to the palace, where they slew the king, and all those that were about him. By this stratagem Cyrus became inaster of Babylon, but he took no care to repair the breach in the banks of the river; so that all the country on that side was overflown, and the current which went to Babylon grew afterwards so shallow, as to become unfit for the smallest navigation. So fally verified were all these prophecies concerning Babylon: Belold I will stir up the Medes against her,' (Isa, xiii. 7.) 1 will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry,' (Jer. li. 36.) • Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be like Sodom and Gomorrah,' (Is. xiii. 19) For I will make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water,' b xiv. 23.) saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts,'Prideaux's Connection, anno 547. [According to Dr Hales, the taking of Babylon by Cyrus was long after this, on the revol of Nabonadius from the dominion of the Medes; and it is ru tainly not said in the book of Daniel, that on the night of Bshazzar's murder the city was taken by Cyrus,' or by any man.' "The great feast, on the night of which Belshazzar was slain, appears to have been at a season of profound peace and tranquillity, when a thousand of his lords could freely come from all parts of his empire without molestation or interruption from a besieging enemy, and when the king would be most aft to forget God, after he had eaten and was full.' "' In the bo of Daniel it is not said how or by whom Belshazzar was slain but it may be collected, says Dr Hales, from Xenophon, that be was slain by conspirators, at the head of whom were Gobrias atal Gadates. This is certainly not said by Xenophon, who seems to have confounded the time at which Bel-hazzar was slain, when the gods punished the impious king, with the taking of Babylon when it had revolted from the Midian yoke; for it is much more probable that Xenophon confounded dates and events, than that there should be any mistake in the canon of Ptolemy, or in the Chaldean records as quoted by Berosus. The family of Nebu chadnezzar being now extinct, our author thinks that Cyaxares or Darius the Mede, who was the brother of Nebuchadnezzar's queen, took possession of the throne by the voluntary ofler of the Babylonians.]—Bishop Gleig.—Ed.

A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7—xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA i—.v. prise, a Belshazzar slain, and the kingdom translated to hesitation, passed into an act, and issued out his proCyaxares, whom the Scripture calls · Darius the Mede.' clamation to that purpose. Darius, from his very first accession to the throne, had a great esteem for Daniel, as knowing him to be a person of extraordinary parts and learning, and long versed in affairs of state; and therefore having divided the whole empire into an hundred and twenty provinces, over which he set governors, and over these three presidents, as the king's chief ministers, he made Daniel the first of these; but it happened to him, as it usually does to all favourites, to be maligned, and envied by others.