JUDAH, FROM B.C. 725 TO B.C. 586

JUDAH, FROM B.C. 725 TO B.C. 586
HEZEKIAH REIGNS
Hezekiah was twenty-five years of age when he succeeded his father, Ahaz, in the kingdom of Judah. He was a most pious prince, and thoroughly imbued with the principles of the theocracy. He testified the most lively zeal for the service and honor of Jehovah; while, as a king, he was disposed to manifest the most unreserved reliance on him, and subservience to him, as Sovereign Lord of the Hebrew people. He therefore won the high eulogium that “there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor any that were before him.”[349]
[349] 2 Kings 18:1-5. Such, however, must be understood as popular forms of describing superior character; for the same is said, in the same terms, of his own great grandson, Josiah.
Sepulcher of the Kings [350]
[350] The Sepulcher of the Kings--It would be rather difficult to prove that the ancient sepulcher which now bears this name is really that to which there are such frequent allusions in the history of the kingdom of Judah. But it would be equally difficult to disprove it. The situation is not unsuitable, nor the internal arrangements unbecoming such a distinction. And if any difficulty were to be started with reference to the architectural character of the sculptured exterior, it might very easily be answered that this was added at a period long subsequent to the original construction of the tomb. It might also be added, that if this be not the Sepulcher of the Kings, no other sepulcher now existing near Jerusalem is entitled to compete that distinction with it. Upon the whole, this is a matter on which one would not like to give a decided opinion; but apart from this matter, the sepulcher in question is of great interest from the very complete example which it offers of the ancient sepulchers.
The Sepulcher of the Kings, so called, is situated nearly a mile to the north of the northwestern gate (Damascus-gate) of the present city, but appears to have been only just outside the northwestern angle of the ancient wall.
These splendid remains differ from most other rock-carved sepulchers in not being cut in the side of a hill, but beneath a level spot of ground approached by a narrow path, which leads to a square enclosure, hewn out of the limestone stratum, of about fifteen or twenty feet deep. A wall of the natural rock separates this from an inner square court, which opens into it by a round arch. On the southern side of this court (which is covered with rubbish and brambles) is a very handsome square portico, with a beautifully-carved architrave--forming probably the most complete specimen of Hebrew sculpture that now exists. The frieze is adorned with a regulus, tri-glyphs, vine-leaves, and other floral embellishments, while the center is charged with an immense cluster of grapes. A pilaster at either end still remains, and in all probability there were anciently two columns in the centre, now destroyed. The face of the rock within the portico is smooth, and presents no appearance of openings, but a low doorway on the left hand leads into a large square antechamber, hewn out of the solid rock. There are no niches, or places for sarcophagi in this apartment, but a series of small chambers branch off on each of its three sides. These are, for the most part, oblong crypt, with ledges on either side for holding the bodies or coffins.
The doors of those chambers have attracted much and deserved attention: they are made of single stones or slabs, seven inches thick, sculptured in panels, so as exactly to resemble doors made by a carpenter at the present day, the whole being completely smoothed and polished, and of the most accurate proportions. These doors turned on pivots, of the same stone, which were inserted in sockets above and below.
There are no troughs or soroi in any of the chambers, but simply ledges on the sides, for bodies or coffins.
A low door and a flight of steps lead down into another suite of chambers, of similar form and construction. In these are found some fine sarcophagi of unsurpassed elegance in form and ornament. Each of them consists of two half cylinders of white marble, excavated within, and which, when placed together, resemble the shaft of a beautiful pillar. The bottom part is comparatively plain; but the lid, or upper part, is covered with the most elaborately carved foliage in basso-relievo, traced in vines, roses, and lily, work. The groove, or cavity, for the body, which is principally hollowed out from the bottom part, is about two feet broad, and a foot deep--a sufficiently large space to contain the body of an ordinary-sized person. The ends also of these sarcophagi are carved; and the general form and appearance might suggest a resemblance to the large carriage-trunks of former days. The niches for the sarcophagi form the segment of a dome, being somewhat differently shaped from some of those in the upper chambers. Above the place of each coffin is a small niche, apparently designed to contain a lamp.
This account of the Royal Sepulchers is abridged and slightly altered from a longer description in Dr. Wilde's Narrative, ii. 298-301. The Rev. J.D. Paxton is another recent traveler, who has given a very clear description of these sepulchers, the exterior of which is represented in our engraving, at page 351. from a drawing by Mr. Arundale.

TEMPLE WORSHIP RESTORED
He began his reign by the restoration of the true religion and the abolishment of idolatry throughout his dominions. In the very first month he opened the doors of the temple, which his father had closed, and restored the worship and service of God in proper order and beauty. In extirpating idolatry he was not content, with the abolition of its grosser forms, but sought out the more native and intimate superstitions which were incentives thereto. The altars illegally erected to Jehovah, which former kings had spared, were by him overthrown. The brazen serpent, which Moses had made in the wilderness, and which was preserved in the temple, came in time to be regarded as a holy relic, to which at last a sort of superstitious worship was paid, and incense burned before it. This was not unnatural, considering the history of this relic, combined with the fact that ophiolatry was then, and before and after, a very common superstition in Egypt and other countries. It nobly illustrates the vigor of Hezekiah's character, and of an entire freedom from superstition, of which it is difficult now to appreciate the full merit, that he spared not even this certainly interesting relic, but broke it in pieces, and instead of nahash, “a serpent,” called it contemptuously nehushian, “a brazen bauble.”
PASSOVER REVIVED
Much attention was also paid by Hezekiah to the dignified and orderly celebration of the festivals, which formed so conspicuous a feature in the ritual system of the Hebrews. The passover in particular, which had fallen into neglect, was revived with great splendor, and, as noticed in the last chapter, Hezekiah sent couriers through the kingdom of Israel to invite the attendance of the Israelites. His object was so obviously religious only, without any political motives, that the last king of Israel offered no opposition: and indeed a kingdom so nearly on the point of being absorbed into the great Assyrian empire, had small occasion to concern itself respecting any possible designs of Hezekiah. The Israelites were therefore left to act as their own dispositions might determine. The couriers went on from city to city proclaiming the message, and delivering the letters with which they were charged. In these the king of Judah manifested great anxiety to induce the Israelites--“the remnant who had escaped out of the hands of the kings of Assyria”--to return to Jehovah, and by that return avert that utter destruction which seemed to impend over them. The great body of the Israelites received the invitation with laughter and derision; but in Zebulon and Asher some were found “who humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.”
Like David, his great model, Hezekiah made provision for the instruction and moral improvement of the people, by the public singing of the Psalms in the temple, and by a new collection of the moral maxims of Solomon.
HEZEKIAH'S BLESSINGS
For his righteous doings the Lord was with Hezekiah, and prospered him in all his reasonable undertakings. He extended the fortifications and magazines throughout the country; he supplied Jerusalem more plentifully with water by means of a new aqueduct; and the Philistines, who had penetrated into the southern parts of Judea in the reign of his father, were conquered by his arms.
The possession of the kingdom of Damascene-Syria, and the entire conquest of Israel, rendered the kings of Assyria all-powerful in those countries. Phoenicia was the next to experience the force of their arms. The Tyrians only (according to the citation which Josephus adduces from their own historian Menander) refused to receive the Assyrian yoke. They fought and dispersed the fleet which the subjugated Phoenicians had furnished for the ulterior objects and remoter enterprises of Shalmaneser. To avenge this act, the Assyrian king left his troops for five years in the Tyrian territory, where they grievously distressed the citizens of Tyre, by cutting off all access ophiolatry to the river and aqueduct from which the town obtained its water. It was the death of Shalmaneser, apparently, which induced the Assyrians to abandon the siege.
ASSYRIAN TRIBUTE STOPPED
It was probably the same occasion, together with an undue reliance upon his fortifications, and too much confidence derived from the success which had attended the small wars in which he had been engaged, which led Hezekiah into the same temerity which had been the ruin of Hoshea. He discontinued the tribute to the Assyrians which had been imposed upon his father, and by that act threw off the yoke which Ahaz had voluntary taken on himself.
SENNACHERIB'S INVASION
In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, the new king of Assyria, named Sennacherib, came a large army to reduce the kingdom of Judah to obedience, as well as to invade Egypt, on account of the encouragement which “So,” the king of that country, had given to Hoshea to revolt, by promises of assistance, which he proved unable to render. Such promises appear to have been renewed to Hezekiah, to induce him to give trouble and employment to a power of which the Egyptians had good cause to be jealous. But the new king Sethos (Se-pthah, priest of Pthah), who had been a priest, considering the services of the soldiers unnecessary to the security of a kingdom entrusted to the protection of the gods, treated the military caste with much indignity, and much abridged their privileges, in consequence of which they refused, when required, to march against the Assyrians.
HEZEKIAH SUBMITS
Hezekiah, disappointed of the assistance which he had expected from Egypt,[351] and observing the overwhelming nature of the force put in action, delayed not to make his submissions to Sennacherib, humbly acknowledging his offence, and offering to submit to any tribute which the king might impose upon him. The desire of the Assyrian not to delay his more important operations against Egypt, seems to have inclined him to listen favorably to this overture. He demanded three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold; and this was paid by Hezekiah, although to raise it he was compelled to exhaust the royal and sacred treasures, and even to strip off the gold with which the doors and pillars of the temple were overlaid.
[351] That he had expectations from that quarter, and that such expectations were known to the Syrians, appears from Rabshakeh's advice to him--“Not to trust upon the staff of that bruised reed, Egypt (upon which if a man lean it will break and pierce his hand);” 2 Kings 18:17-35.
SENNACHERIB RETURNS
Sennacherib received the silver and gold; but after he had taken Ashdod, one of the keys of Egypt, he began to think it would be unsafe in his invasion of that country to leave the kingdom of Judah unsubdued in his rear. He therefore determined to complete the subjugation of Judah in the first place--the rather as his recent observations, and the humble submission of Hezekiah, left him little reason to expect much delay or difficulty in this enterprise. He soon reduced all the cities to his power except Libnah and Lachish, to which he laid siege, and Jerusalem, to which he sent his general Rabshakeh with a very haughty summons to surrender. Many blasphemous and disparaging expressions were applied to Jehovah by the heathen general. By this he was, as it were, bound to vindicate his own honor and power; and, accordingly, the prophet Isaiah was commissioned to promise the king deliverance, and to foretell the destruction of the Assyrian host: “Lo! I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor, and shall return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land,” 2 Kings 19:7.
The rumor by which Sennacherib was alarmed and interrupted, was no other than the report which was spread abroad that Tirhakah the Ethiopian, king of Upper Egypt, was marching with an immense army to cut off his retreat. He then determined to withdraw; but first sent a boasting letter to Hezekiah, defying the God of Israel, and threatening what destructions he would execute upon the nation on his return. But that very night an immense proportion of the Assyrian host, even one hundred and eighty thousand men, were struck dead by “the blast” which the prophet had predicted, and which has, with great probability, been ascribed to the agency of the simoom, or hot pestilential south wind, which we may have another occasion to notice.
Sennacherib returned to Nineveh, and in the exasperation of defeat he behaved with great severity to the captive Israelites. But his career was soon closed. Fifty-two days after his return he was slain, while worshipping in the temple of the god Nisroch, by his two eldest sons. Thus the prophecy of Isaiah was in every point accomplished. The parricides[352] fled into Armenia, leaving the steps of the throne clear for the ascent of the third son, whose name was Esarhaddon. This great blow so weakened the Assyrian monarchy as not only to free the king of Judah from his apprehensions, but enabled the Medes and Babylonians to assert their independence.
[352] Those who murder their parents
HEZEKIAH'S LIFE EXTENDED
The same year Hezekiah fell sick--apparently of the plague--and he was warned by the prophet Isaiah to prepare for death. The king was afflicted at these tidings; and turning his face to the wall (as he lay in his bed), to be unnoticed by his attendants, he besought the Lord, with tears, to remember him with favor. His prayer was heard; and the prophet, who had not yet left the palace, was charged to return and acquaint Hezekiah that, on the third following day, he should resume his customary attendance at the temple; and not only that, but that fifteen years should be added to his life. In confirmation of this extraordinary communication, the king desired some miraculous sign; and accordingly the shadow of the style upon the dial of Ahaz went backward ten degrees. The event corresponded to these intimations. The prolongation of life was the more important and desirable to Hezekiah, as at that time there was no direct heir to the crown. These circumstances, together with the signal deliverance from Sennacherib, not only cured the people of the idolatry which Ahaz had introduced, and retained them for some time to their fidelity to Jehovah, but excited the curiosity and admiration of the neighboring nations. Merodach-Baladan, the king of Babylon, sent an embassy to congratulate the king on his deliverance from the Assyrians (through which Merodach himself had been enabled to establish his independence in Babylon), and upon his recovery from his illness, as well as to make particular inquiries respecting the miracle by which it was accompanied, and which must have been of peculiar interest to a scientific people like the Babylonians. Hezekiah appears to have been highly flattered by this embassy from so distant a quarter. The ambassadors were treated with much attention and respect, and the king himself took pleasure in showing them the curiosities and treasures of his kingdom. That he had treasures to show, seems to signify that he had recovered his wealth from the Assyrians, or had enriched himself by their spoil.
The sacred historian attributes Hezekiah's conduct on this occasion to “his pride of heart,” involving an appropriation to himself of that glory which belonged only to Jehovah. Although, therefore, his conduct did not occasion the doom, it gave the prophet Isaiah occasion to make known to him that the treasures of his kingdom were the destined spoil, and his posterity the destined captives of the very nation whose present ambassage had produced in him so much unseemly pride. This was in every way a most remarkable prediction; for Babylon was then an inconsiderable kingdom, and the people almost unknown by whom the prediction was to be fulfilled. Hezekiah received this announcement with true oriental submission--satisfied, he said, if there were but peace and truth in his own days.
The remainder of Hezekiah's reign, through the years of prolonged life which had been granted to him, appears to have been prosperous and happy. To no other man was it ever granted to view the approach of death with certain knowledge, through the long, but constantly shortening, vista of years that lay before him. At the time long before appointed, Hezekiah died, after a reign of twenty-nine years, B.C. 725.
MANASSEH REIGNS
Manasseh was but twelve years of age when he lost his father, and began to reign. The temptations which surrounded him, and the evil counsels which were pressed upon him, were too strong for his youth. He was corrupted; and it seemed the special object of his reign to overthrow all the good his father had wrought in Judah. The crimes of all former kings seem light in comparison with those which disgraced his reign. He upheld idolatry with all the influence of the regal power, and that with such inconceivable boldness, that the pure and holy ceremonies of the temple service were superseded by obscene rites of an idol image set up in the very sanctuary; while the courts of God's house were occupied by altars to “the host of heaven,” or the heavenly bodies. He maintained herds of necromancers, astrologers, and soothsayers of various kinds. The practice which was, of all others, the most abhorrent to Jehovah, the king sanctioned by his own atrocious example; for he devoted his own children, by fire to strange gods, in the blood-stained valley of Ben-Hinnom. Wickedness now reigned on high, and as usual persecuted righteousness and truth; so that, by a strong but significant hyperbole, we are told that innocent blood flowed in the streets of Jerusalem like water.
ESARHADDON RISES IN POWER
While these things were transacting in Judah, Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria, was consolidating his power, and endeavoring to reunite the broken fragments of his father's empire. It was not until the thirtieth year of his reign that he recovered Babylon, the affairs of which appear to have fallen into great disorder after the death of Merodach-Baladan, if we may judge from the occurrence of five reigns and two interregnums of ten years, all in the course of the twenty-nine years which preceded its reduction again under the Assyrian yoke.
When Esarhaddon had sufficiently re-established his authority, and settled his affairs in the east, he turned his attention westward, and determined to restore his authority in that quarter, and to avenge the disgrace and loss which the Assyrians had sustained in Palestine. This intention constituted him Jehovah's avenger upon the king and nation of Judah, for the manifold iniquities into which they had by this time fallen.
MANASSEH DEPORTED
Esarhaddon entered Judah in great force, defeated Manasseh in battle, took him alive, and sent him in chains to Babylon, together with many of his nobles and of the people. They were sent to Babylon probably because Esarhaddon, to prevent another defection, made that city his chief residence during the last thirteen years of his reign. It was probably on the same occasion that he removed the principal remaining inhabitants of Israel, and replaced them by more colonists from the East.
MANASSEH PRAYS
In the solitude of his prison at Babylon, Manasseh became an altered and a better man. The sins of his past life, and the grievous errors of his government were brought vividly before him; and humbling himself before the God of his fathers, he cried earnestly for pardon, and besought an opportunity of evincing the sincerity of his repentance. The history makes mention of his prayer, as having been preserved; and the Apocrypha contains a prayer which purports to be that which he used on this occasion. This it would be difficult to prove; but the prayer itself is a good one, and suitable to the occasion.
MANASSEH RESTORED
His prayer was heard, and the opportunity which he sought was granted to him. Esarhaddon gave way to the suggestions of a more generous policy than that by which he had been at first actuated. He released the captive from his prison, and after having, we may presume, won him over to the interests of Assyria, and weaned from the national bias in favor of an Egyptian alliance, sent him home with honor. Unquestionably, he remained tributary to the Assyrian monarch, and his territory was probably considered as forming a useful barrier between the territories of Assyria and of Egypt. On his return, Manasseh applied himself with great diligence to the correction of the abuses of his former reign. He also fortified the city of Zion on the west side by a second high wall (or, perhaps, he only rebuilt and carried to a greater height the wall which the Assyrians had thrown down), and endeavored as far as possible to restore the weakened kingdom to a better state. He died in B.C. 696, after a protracted reign of fifty-five years; and, mindful of the first iniquities of his reign, a place in the Sepulcher of the Kings was denied him, but he was buried in his own garden.
AMON'S REIGN
Amon the son of Manasseh was twenty-five years of age when he ascended the throne of Judah. He had been born after the repentance and restoration of his father, yet the first ways of Manasseh, and not the last, were those which he chose to follow. He revived the idolatries which had been suppressed; but the full development of his plans and character was interrupted by a conspiracy, in which he perished after a short reign of two years. B.C. 639.
JOSIAH'S REIGN
Josiah was but eight years old at the death of his father; and during his minority the affairs of the government were administered by the high-priest Joachim and a council of elders at Jerusalem. The young king profited well by the excellent education he received under the tutelage of the high-priest. After a minority of eight years he assumed the government, and proceeded to act with far greater vigor against the idolatries of the land than the regent had ventured to exercise. He not only destroyed every form of idolatry which he was able to detect, but overthrew the altars illegally erected to Jehovah, and corrected the other irregularities which had in previous times been tolerated. In the course of these purgations, which were conducted by the king in person, he came to Bethel, and there (according to the prediction made nearly four centuries before, which had mentioned him by name) he defiled the altar which Jeroboam had erected before the golden calf in that place, by burning thereon the disinterred bones of dead men--the bones of the worshippers. And it was thus that the idolatrous altars were defiled by him throughout the land.
The zeal of the king took him beyond the limits of his own kingdom into the land of Israel, which he traversed even to its remoter parts, uprooting idolatry and all its adjuncts, wherever he came. For this rather remarkable proceeding out of his own kingdom there are different ways of accounting. The most probable seems to be that in restoring Manasseh to his throne, the king of Assyria had extended his authority (for the purpose of internal government) over the neighboring territory. His favor and confidence, continued to Josiah, agrees with and helps to explain some other circumstances.
THE LAW FOUND
When these operations were completed, measures were taken for a thorough repair of the temple. While this was in progress, the high-priest, Hilkiah, discovered the autograph copy of the Law, written by the hand of Moses, which had been deposited in or beside the ark of the covenant in the sanctuary. By his direction Shaphan, the chief scribe, read therefrom in the audience of the king, who no sooner heard that part which contains the prophecies of Moses against the nation, foretelling the captivities and destructions which should befall it for its iniquities, than Josiah knew by signs not to be mistaken, that the predicted calamities were imminent, for the iniquities had been rife, and the doom could not but soon follow; already, indeed, by the captivity of Israel, it had been half accomplished. It was for this that the king rent his garments.[353] He delayed not to send to Huldah the prophetess, “who dwelt in the college at Jerusalem,” to learn from her the real intentions of Jehovah, and the sense in which these alarming denunciations were to be understood. She confirmed the obvious interpretation--that the unquenchable wrath of God would ere long be poured out upon Judah and Jerusalem, consuming, or bringing into bondage, the land, the city, the temple, the people, the king--but adding, for the king himself, that because of the righteousness which had been found in him, he should be gathered to his grave before those evil days arrived.
[353] It is quite evident that the king had never before read or heard these denunciations of the law, which seems hard to account for, when we consider that copies of the law do not appear to have been scarce, the rather as, no great while before, many copies had been made under the direction of Hezekiah. It has been suggested that the book in common use, and even that used by kings and priests, was some abstract, like our abridgment of the statutes, which contained only matters of positive law, omitting the promises and threatenings. The king being impatient to know the contents, the scribe begins to read immediately; and as the books of the times were written upon long scrolls, and rolled upon a stick, the latter part of Deuteronomy would come first in course; and there the scribe would find those terrible threatenings whereby the king was so strongly affected. See Deuteronomy 28.
PASSOVER CELEBRATED
By these disclosures new zeal for the Law was kindled in the heart of Josiah. The very same year, he caused the passover to be celebrated with great solemnity, in which not only the people of Judah, but the remnant of the Hebrew race which the Assyrians had left in the land of Israel, joined. There had been no such passover since the foundation of the kingdom.
JUDAH AND EGYPT
To understand the circumstances which led to the death of King Josiah, it is necessary to view correctly the position of his kingdom, as a frontier barrier between the two great kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt, whose borders, by the conquests of the former power were, and had for some time been, in close and dangerous approximation. It is obvious that, from the first, the political game of Western Asia in that age lay between Egypt and Assyria, the former power being the only power west of the Euphrates which could for an instant be expected to resist or retaliate the aggressive movements of the latter. There was little question that the rich and fertile valley of the Nile might tempt the cupidity[354] or the ambition of the Assyrians. It was therefore the obvious policy of the kings of Egypt to maintain the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, as a barrier between their country and the Assyrians, and it was the equally obvious policy of the latter to break that barrier down. Hence Hoshea in Israel had been encouraged by Sabaco to assert his independence, with a promise of support, which there is reason to believe that the Egyptian king was less unwilling than unable to render. The fall of Israel, as it weakened the barrier, could not but be a matter of regret to the Egyptians, and it would still be their desire to strengthen the hands of the kings of Judah. In this position it became a question at Jerusalem, as it had been in Samaria, whether the forbearance of the Assyrians should be purchased by submission, or that reliance should be reposed on the support of Egypt in opposition to that great power. The kings and people seem to have been generally well disposed “to lean upon Egypt,” not more from habit and ancient intercourse, than from the perception that it was clearly the interest of that country to support them against the Assyrians. But when it had happened more than once that Egypt, after having encouraged them to shake off the Assyrian yoke, was unable (we can not believe unwilling) to render the stipulated assistance at the time it was most needed, and left them exposed to the tender mercies of the provoked Assyrians, the prophets raised their voice against a confidence and an alliance by which nothing but calamity had been produced, and encouraged unreserved and quiet submission to the Assyrian yoke. Even Hezekiah however, as we have seen, was induced by the prospect of support from Egypt, to throw off his dependence on Assyria. The consequent invasion of Judah by Sennacherib was so obviously threatening to Egypt, that Sethos (the king who then reigned in Lower Egypt) could only have been prevented by the state of affairs in his own dominion from rendering the assistance which he had led the king of Judah to expect. But, as already stated, this very unwarlike person--a priest by education and habit--had so offended the powerful military caste by abridgments of their privileges, that they refused to act, even in defence of the country. But when Tirhakah, the Ethiopian, who ruled in Upper Egypt, heard of the threatened invasion by Sennacherib, he marched against him; and the Scriptural account would imply that the mere rumor of his approach sufficed to induce the Assyrians to contemplate a retreat, which was hastened by the singular destruction in his army by the pestilential simoom.[355] This solitary example of assistance from Egypt, although from an unexpected quarter, may be supposed to have strengthened the predilection of the king and people of Judah toward the Egyptian alliance; and it was almost certainly with the concurrence of Egypt that Manasseh allowed himself to incur the wrath of the Assyrians. But during his imprisonment at Babylon he would seem to have acquired the conviction that it was his best policy to adhere to his Assyrian vassalage; and we may conclude he was not released without such oaths and covenants as his awakened conscience bound him to observe. He was probably restored to his throne as a sworn tributary, or as being bound to keep the country as a frontier against Egypt. The conduct of Josiah renders this the most probable conclusion.
[354] Sir J.G. Wilkinson alleges, we know not on what authority, that Sennacherib was fought and beaten by Tirhakah, and attributes to the jealousy of the Memphites the version of the affair given to Herodotus, by which he considers the truth to be disguised and the glory of Tirhakah obscured. This version is, that the Assyrians actually invaded Egypt; and Sethos being unsupported by the military, was induced by a dream to march against the enemy at the head of an undisciplined rabble of artisans and laborers. While the two parties were encamped opposite each other, near Pelusium, a prodigious number of field mice visited the Assyrian camp by night and gnawed to pieces their quivers and bows, as well as the handles of their shields, so that, in the morning, finding themselves without arms, they fled in confusion, losing great numbers of their men. This is the story which Sir J.G. Wilkinson regards as invented by the Memphites to withdraw from Tirhakah the credit of the Assyrian overthrow, which was really his work. But from the cast given to the story, we are very much more disposed to believe that it is rather a version of the extraordinary overthrow which the Assyrians sustained by night in Palestine, and which the Egyptians desired to appropriate to their own country and their own gods. Or may it not be that, seeing the Hebrews alleged their God to be the Creator of the world, the Egyptians considered him the same as Phtah, the creator in their mythology, and whose priest Sethos had been? This seems to us very likely, the rather as it is difficult without this supposed identity to account for a circumstance in a following reign, when Necho expected to influence the pious Josiah by telling that God had sent him (Necho) to war against the Assyrians.
[355] Extreme greed
JOSIAH ATTACKS THE EGYPTIANS
The Assyrian power got involved in wars with the Medes and Chaldeans, by which its attention was fully engaged and its energies weakened. Egypt, on the other hand, united under one king, had been consolidating its strength. Pharaoh Necho, the king of that country, thought the opportunity favorable to act aggressively against the Assyrians, and to that end resolved to march and attack this old enemy on his old frontier. Carchemish, an important post on the Euphrates, and the key of Assyria on the western side, was the point to which his march was directed. He passed along the seacoast of Palestine, northward, the route usually followed by the Egyptian kings when they entered Asia. Josiah being apprized of this, and mindful of his relation to Assyria, and of his obligation to defend the frontier against the Egyptians, assembled his forces and determined to impede, if he could not prevent, the march of Necho through his territories. When the Egyptian king heard that Josiah had posted himself on the skirts of the plain of Esdraelon--that great battlefield of nations--to oppose his progress, he sent messengers to engage him to desist from his interference, alleging that he had no hostile intentions against Judah, but against an enemy with whom he was at war, and warning Josiah that his imprudent interference might prove fatal to himself and his people. But these considerations had no weight with Josiah, against what appeared to him a clear case of duty. He resisted the progress of the Egyptian army with great spirit, considering the disproportion of numbers. He himself fought in disguise; but a commissioned arrow found him out, and inflicted a mortal wound in the neck. He directed his attendants to remove him from the battle-field. Escaping from the heavy shower of arrows with which their broken ranks were overwhelmed, they removed him from the chariot in which he was wounded, and placing him in “a second one that he had,” they conveyed him to Jerusalem, where he died. Thus prematurely perished, at the age of thirty-nine, one of the best and most zealous kings who ever sat upon the throne of David. His zeal in his vocation, as the over-turner of idolatry, must have been much stimulated by the knowledge that he had been pre-ordained, by name, to this service, many centuries before his birth. We know not why the last act of his life should be deemed blameworthy by many who in other respects think highly of his character and reign, Was it not rather noble and heroic in him to oppose the vast host of Necho, in obedience to the obligation which his family had incurred to the Assyrian kings, and in consideration of which his grandfather, his father, and himself, had been permitted to exercise the sovereign authority in the land? The death of Josiah was lamented by the prophet Jeremiah in an elegiac[356] ode, which has not been preserved.
[356] Mournful lament
Intent upon his original design, Necho paused not to avenge himself upon the Judahites for the opposition he had encountered, but continued his march to the Euphrates.
JEHOIAKIM MADE KING
Three months had scarcely elapsed, when, returning victorious from the capture of Carchemish and the defeat of the Assyrians, he learned that the people had called a younger son of Josiah, named Jehoahaz or Shallum, twenty-three years old, to the throne, overlooking his elder brother. Displeased that such a step had been taken without any reference to the will of their now paramount lord and conqueror, he sent and summoned Jehoahaz to attend on him at Riblah, in the land of Hamath; and having deposed him and condemned the land to pay in tribute a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold, he took him as a prisoner to Jerusalem. On arriving there, Necho made Eliakim, the eldest son of Josiah, king in the room of his father, changing his name to Jehoiakim, according to a custom frequently practised by lords paramount and masters toward subject princes and slaves. The altered name was a mark of subjection. Then taking the silver and gold which he had levied upon the people, Necho departed for Egypt, taking with him the captive Jehoahaz, who there terminated his short and inglorious career, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah--Jeremiah 22:10-12.
JEHOIAKIM'S IDOLATRY
Jehoiakim, the eldest son of Josiah, was twenty-five years old when he began to reign. He reigned eleven years, and by his idolatries and misgovernment proved himself worthy of the throne of Ahaz and Manasseh. Early in his reign he was called to repentance by the prophet Jeremiah, who publicly, at the feast of tabernacles, in the ears of the assembled nation, denounced, in the name of Jehovah, the severest judgments against king and people, including the destruction of the city and the temple. For this he was seized as a seditious person, worthy of death; but he was acquitted by the nobles, and on this and other occasions screened by some persons of influence, who had been in power in the good times of Josiah.
BABYLON RETAKES AREA
Meanwhile the war in the east approached its termination. The allied Medes and Babylonians--the former under Cyaxares, and the latter under Nabopolassar--besieged the last Assyrian king in Nineveh. The siege was turned into a blockade; and Nabopolassar, already assuming the government of the empire which had fallen from the enfeebled hands of the Assyrians, dispatched his son Nebuchadnezzar westward, with an adequate force, to chastise the Egyptians for their late proceedings, and to restore the revolted Syrians and Phoenicians to their obedience. In these different objects he completely succeeded.[357] Carchemish (Jeremiah 47:2) he recovered from the Egyptians, and Jehoiakim was compelled to transfer his allegiance from Necho to the Babylonian. This was in the first year of his reign; in the second Nineveh was taken and destroyed by the allies. The conquering Medes were content to have secured their independence and avenged their wrongs, and left to the conquering Chaldeans the lion's share of the spoil. Babylon now became the imperial capital; but Nabopolassar himself, the founder of the great Chaldea-Babylonian empire, died almost immediately after the fall of Nineveh, and the young hero in the west was called to fill the glorious throne which his father had set up.
[357] Berosus in Egypt, Antiq. x. 11, 1
JEHOIAKIM REBELS
The absence of Nebuchadnezzar in another quarter seemed to the king of Egypt a favorable opportunity of recovering his foreign conquests. He therefore undertook another expedition against Carchemish (Jeremiah 46:2); and as Jehoiakim, in Judea, renounced, about the same time, his sworn allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, there is much reason to conclude that he was encouraged to this step by the Egyptian king. This measure was earnestly but ineffectually reprobated by the prophet Jeremiah, who foretold the consequences which actually followed.
EGYPT CHASTISED BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR
Nebuchadnezzar, who was certainly the greatest general of that age, did not allow the Egyptian king to surprise him. He met and defeated him at Carchemish, and then, pursuing his victory, stripped the Egyptian of all his northern possessions, from the river Euphrates to the Nile, and this by so strong an act of repression that he dared “come no more out of his own land.”
JUDAH CHASTISED BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR
The king of Judah now lay at the mercy of the hero whose anger he had so unadvisedly provoked. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, and took it. He committed no destructions but such as were the direct effect of his military operations and, with a leniency very rare in those days, he refrained from displacing Jehoiakim from his throne. He was content to indemnify himself by the spoils of the temple, part of the golden ornaments and vessels of which he took away; and with removing to Babylon some members of the royal family, and sons of the principal nobles. These would serve as hostages, and at the same time help to swell the pomp and ostentation of the Babylonian court. Among the persons thus removed was Daniel and his three friends, whose condition and conduct will soon engage our notice, as part of the history of the captivity. It must be evident that the leniency exhibited on this occasion by Nebuchadnezzar, may be ascribed to his desire to maintain the kingdom of Judah as a barrier between his Syrian dominions and Egypt; for since Egypt had become aggressive, it was no longer his interest that this barrier should be destroyed.
JEHOIAKIM REBELS AGAINST BABYLON AGAIN
The court at Jerusalem soon again fell into much disorder. The king turned a deaf ear to all wise counsel and all truth, as delivered by the prophet Jeremiah, and listened only to the false prophets, who won his favor by the flattering prospects which they drew, and by the chimerical[358] hopes which they created. The final result was, that this prince again had the temerity to renounce his allegiance to the Babylonian, to whose clemency he owed his life and throne.
[358] Wildly imaginative
JEHOIAKIM REJECTS GOD'S PROPHETS
This occurred in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, B.C. 604, which it is important to note, as it is from this date that the “seventy years” of the Babylonish captivity is with the greatest apparent propriety dated (Jeremiah 25:11; 2 Chronicles 36:21-23). This period of seventy years of exile was foretold by Jeremiah;[359] and it is most remarkable, that, from whichever of the more marked points these seventy years be commenced, we are brought at the termination to some one equally marked point in the history of the restoration and re-settlement of the nation.
[359] Dated from this point, the seventy years expired in B.C. 536; the year that Cyrus took Babylon, and issued a decree for the return of such of the Jews as chose, throughout his dominions, to their own land (Ezra 3:1); and this agrees with the account of Josephus, “in the first year of Cyrus, which was the seventieth (to ebdomhkoston) from the day of the removal of our people from their native land to Babylon,” etc. (Ant. xi. 1, 1); for from B.C. 605 to B.C. 536 was sixty-nine years complete, or seventy years current. Hales, to whom we are indebted for this conclusion, thinks that it affords a satisfactory adjustment of the chronology of this most intricate and disputed period of the captivity, and that in it “all the varying reports of sacred and profane chronology are reconciled and brought into harmony with each other.”
Jehoiakim was not at all reformed by the calamity which had befallen his house and country. It only served to increase the ferocity of his spirit. This reign, therefore, continued to be cruel, tyrannical, and oppressive, and, still more and more, “his eyes and his heart were intent on covetousness, oppression, and the shedding of innocent blood.” Of this an instance is found in the case of the prophet Urijah, “whom he slew with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people,” because he prophesied of the impending calamities of Judah and Jerusalem (Jeremiah 22:13-16). For these things the personal doom of Jehoiakim was thus pronounced by Jeremiah--
“…Thus saith Jehovah,
Concerning Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Israel--
They shall not lament for him, saying,
Ah, my brother! nor {for the queen}, Ah, sister!
They shall not lament for him, saying,
Ah, Lord! nor {for her}, Ah, her glory!
With the burial of an ass shall he be buried,
Drawn forth and cast beyond the gates of Jerusalem”--(Jeremiah 22:18-19).
For this prophecy the prophet was cast into prison, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. The following year, acted upon by that strong constraint to deliver the word entrusted to him, which he himself so forcibly describes,[360]
[360] “Thou didst persuade me, Jehovah, and I was persuaded;
Thou wast stronger than I, and didst prevail.
I am every day the object of laughter;
Every one of them holdeth me in derision.
For whensoever I speak--
If I cry out of violence, and proclaim devastation,
The word of Jehovah is turned against me,
Into reproach and disgrace continually.
But when I say, I will not make mention of it,
Neither will I speak any more in his name;
Then it becomes in my heart as a burning fire,
Being pent up in my bones:
I am weary with refraining, and can not [be silent]”--Jeremiah 20:7-9.
Jeremiah dictated to his friend and follower, the scribe Baruch, another prophecy, to the same effect as the former, but couched in stronger language, declaring the ruin which impended, through the Babylonian king, unless speedy and strong repentance intervened to avert the doom. The roll, thus written, Baruch was sent to read publicly to the people assembled from all the country on account of a solemn fast for which public opinion had called. Baruch accordingly read it in the court of the temple, in the audience of all the people assembled there. He afterward, at their request, read it more privately to the princes. They heard it with consternation, and determined to make its contents known to the king. Baruch was directed to go and conceal himself, and the roll was taken and read to the king, who was then sitting in his winter apartment, with a brazier of burning charcoal before him. When, he had heard three or four sections, the king kindled into rage, and taking the roll from the reader, he cut it with the scribe's knife, and threw it into the fire, where it was consumed. He also ordered the prophet and his friend to be put to death; but this was averted by the kind providence of the Almighty Master whom they served.
The undaunted prophet directed Baruch to rewrite the prophecy which had been burnt, with additional matter of the same purport; while to Jehoiakim himself the terrible message was sent:
“Thus saith Jehovah,
Concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah--
He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David;
And his dead body shall be cast out,
In the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost”--Jeremiah 36:30.
The end of this miserable man doubtless corresponded with these predictions, although the historical narrative of that event is involved in some obscurity and apparent contradiction. The statement we shall now give appears to be the only one by which, as it appears to us, all these difficulties can be reconciled. It is evident that if Jehoiakim did not again revolt, his conduct was at least so unsatisfactory to the king of Babylon, that he sent an army against Jerusalem, containing some Chaldean troops, but composed chiefly from the surrounding subject nations, as the Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites. In what manner they performed their mission we know not, but according to the figurative description which Ezekiel (Ezekiel 9:5-9) gives of Jehoiakim as a rapacious “lion's whelp,” we learn that “the nations from the provinces set about him on every side, and spread their net over him, and he was taken in their pit; and they secured him with chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon.” Nebuchadnezzar was then probably at Riblah, at which place the eastern conquerors appear to have usually held their court when in Syria. He bound the captive king “with fetters {intending} to carry him to Babylon” (2 Chronicles 36:6); but took him first to Jerusalem, where he appears to have died before this intention could be executed; and the prophecies require us to conclude that his body was cast forth with indignity, and lay exposed to the elements and beasts of prey, which is what is intended by “the burial of an ass.”
JECONIAH THEN ZEDEKIAH REIGN
The preceding invaders appear to have been contented with securing the person of Jehoiakim, and taking him to Nebuchadnezzar; for when they had departed with their royal captive, the people made his son Jeconiah (otherwise Jehoiachin and Coniah) king in the room of his father. He was then (B.C. 597) eighteen years of age, and had barely time to manifest his bad disposition, when Nebuchadnezzar himself, who was displeased at this appointment, appeared before Jerusalem. It would seem that he was admitted without opposition; but Jeconiah was, nevertheless, held a close prisoner. The money which remained in the royal treasury, and the golden utensils of the temple, were collected and sent as spoil to Babylon; and the deposed king, and his whole court, seven thousand soldiers, one thousand artisans, and two thousand nobles and men of wealth, altogether, with wives and children, amounting probably to 40,000 persons, were sent away into captivity to the river Chebar (Chaboras) in Mesopotamia. Thus only the lower class of citizens and peasantry were left behind. The future prophet, Ezekiel, was among the captives; and Mattaniah, the remaining son of Josiah, and brother of Jehoiakim, was made king of the impoverished land by Nebuchadnezzar, who, according to the custom in such cases, changed his name to Zedekiah, and bound him by strong and solemn oaths of allegiance.
Remains of the Ancient Port of Sidon

ZEDEKIAH REBELS AGAINST BABYLON
The Hebrews who remained in Judah continued however to cherish dreams of independence from the Chaldeans--impossible, under the circumstances in which WesternAsia was then placed, or possible only through such special interventions of Providence as had glorified their early history, but all further claim to which they had long since forfeited. Even the captives in Mesopotamia and Chaldea were looking forward to a speedy return to their own land. These extravagant expectations were strongly discouraged by Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and by Ezekiel in Mesopotamia; but their reproofs were not heeded, nor their prophecies believed. Accordingly, Zedekiah, who seems not to have been ill-disposed, otherwise than as influenced by evil counsellors, was led openly to renounce his allegiance, in the ninth year of his reign. The temerity of this act would be astonishing and unaccountable, were it not that, as usual, the renunciation was attended by an alliance with the king of Egypt, Pharaoh Hophra--the Apries and Vaphres of profane authors--who indeed had acquired a prominence in this quarter which might make the preference of his alliance seem a comparatively safe speculation. Apries, in the early part of his reign, was a very prosperous king. He sent an expedition against the Isle of Cyprus; besieged and took Gaza (Jeremiah 47:1) and the city of Sidon; engaged and vanquished the king of Tyre; and, being uniformly successful, he made himself master of Phoenicia, and part of Palestine; thus recovering much of that influence in Syria which had been taken from Egypt by the Assyrians and Babylonians.
SIEGE OF JERUSALEM
From the result it is evident that, on receiving the news of this revolt of one who owed his throne to him, and whose fidelity to him had been pledged by the most solemn vows, Nebuchadnezzar resolved no longer to attempt to maintain the separate existence of Judah as a royal state, but to incorporate it absolutely, as a province, with his empire. An army was, with little delay, marched into Judea, and laid immediate siege to Jerusalem. Jeremiah continued to counsel the king to save the city and temple by unreserved submission to the Chaldeans, and abandonment of the Egyptian alliance; but his auditors, trusting that the Egyptians would march to the relief of the place, determined to protract the defence of the city to the utmost. The Egyptians did, in fact, march to their assistance; but when Nebuchadnezzar raised the siege of Jerusalem and advanced to meet them, they retreated before him into Egypt, without hazarding a battle.
The withdrawal of the Chaldean forces from Jerusalem, with the confident expectation that they would be defeated by the Egyptians, filled the inhabitants with the most extravagant joy, and quite reversed--and so evinced the hollowness of--the slight acts of repentance and reformation which the apparent urgency of danger had produced. Their short-lived joy was terminated by the reappearance of the Chaldeans before the city. They prepared, however, to make a vigorous, or at least a protracted defence, for they well knew that, after so many provocations, little mercy was to be expected from Nebuchadnezzar, and they were probably acquainted with the fell purpose which that great monarch appears to have formed.
In the account of this siege much notice is taken of the respective works, the forts, the towers, etc., of the besiegers and the besieged. This may throw some light on the state to which the art of attacking and defending towns had then attained.
JERUSALEM DESTROYED
The siege was continued until the eleventh year of Zedekiah (B.C. 586), eighteen months from the beginning, when the Chaldeans stormed the city about midnight, and put the inhabitants to the sword, young and old, many of them in the very courts of the temple. The king himself, with his sons, his officers, and the remnant of the army, escaped from the city, but were pursued by the Chaldeans, and overtaken in the plain of Jericho, and carried as prisoners to Nebuchadnezzar, who was then at Riblah in the province of Hamath. The Babylonian king upbraided Zedekiah for his ingratitude and breach of faith, and ordered a terrible punishment to be inflicted on him. To cut off all future hope of reigning in his race, he ordered his sons to be slain before his eyes; and then, to exclude him from all hope of ever again reigning in his own person, he ordered that the last throes of his murdered children should be his last sight in this world. His eyes were put out--a barbarous mode of disqualifying a man for political good or evil, with which the governments of the East still continue to visit those whose offences excite displeasure, or whose pretensions create fear. The blind king was then led in fetters of brass to Babylon, where he died. Thus were fulfilled two prophecies, by different and distant prophets, which by their apparent dissonance had created mirth and derision in Jerusalem. Jeremiah had told the king, after the return of the Chaldean army to the siege, that he should surely be taken prisoner; that his eyes should see the king of Babylon, and that he should be carried captive to Babylon, and that he should die there, not by the sword, but in peace, and with the same honorable “burnings” with which his fathers had been interred;[361] while Ezekiel had predicted that he should be brought captive to Babylon, yet should never see that city, although he should die therein.[362]
[361] Jeremiah 32:4-5.
[362] Ezekiel 12:13.
Nebuchadnezzar appears to have been dissatisfied at the only partial manner in which his purposes against Judah had been executed. He therefore sent Nebuzaradan, the captain of his guard, with an army of Chaldeans to Jerusalem. The temple and the city were then burnt to the ground, and all the walls demolished, while all the vessels of brass, silver, and gold, which had been left before, and all the treasure of the temple, the palace, and the houses of the nobles, were taken for spoil; and of the people none were left but the poor of the land to be vine-dressers and husbandmen. This was about a month after the city was first taken.
SABBATICAL YEAR DESOLATION
Thus was the land made desolate, that “she might enjoy her sabbaths,” or the arrearage of sabbatic years, of which she had been defrauded by the avarice and disobedience of the people. That these sabbatic years, being the celebration of every seventh year as a season of rest, even to the soil which then lay fallow, amounted to not less than seventy, shows how soon, and how long, that important and faith-testing institution had been neglected by the nation. The early predictions of Moses,[363] and the later one of Jeremiah,[364] that the land should enjoy the rest of which it had been defrauded, is very remarkable, when we consider that, as exemplified in Israel, it was not the general policy of the conquerors to leave the conquered country in desolation, but to replenish it by foreign colonists, by whom it might be cultivated.
[364] 2 Chronicles 36:21.
[365] Leviticus 26:34
GEDALIAH MADE GOVERNOR
Nebuchadnezzar made Gedaliah, a Hebrew of distinction, governor of the poor remnant which was left in the land. Gedaliah was a well-disposed man, of a generous and unsuspecting nature, who was anxious to promote the well-being of the people by reconciling them to the Babylonian government. In this design he was assisted by Jeremiah, who had been released from prison when the city was taken, and was treated with much consideration by the Babylonian general, to whose care he had been recommended by Nebuchadnezzar himself. Nebuzaradan indeed offered to take him to Babylon and provide for him there; but the prophet chose rather to remain with his friend Gedaliah, who fixed his residence at Mizpeh beyond Jordan.
THE REFUGE IN EGYPT
As soon as the Babylonian army had withdrawn, those nobles and warriors returned who had saved themselves by flight in the first instance. Among these was Ishmael, a prince of the royal family, who, jealous of the possession by Gedaliah of the government to which he considered that his birth gave him the best right, formed a conspiracy to take away his life. This was intimated to the governor, but he treated it as an infamous calumny upon Ishmael, which generous confidence was rewarded by his being murdered, with all the Hebrews and Chaldeans at Mizpeh who were attached to him, by that bad man and his dependants. The vengeance of the Chaldeans was now to be dreaded, and therefore Ishmael and all his followers fled toward the country of the Ammonites (who had promoted the designs of Ishmael). They attempted to take with them the king's daughter and the residue of the people; but these were recovered by Johanan and other officers, who pursued them, so that Ishmael escaped with only eight men to the Ammonites. Johanan and the others were fearful of the effects of the resentment of the Chaldeans for the massacre of which Ishmael had been guilty. They therefore determined to take refuge in Egypt with all the people. This intention was earnestly opposed by Jeremiah, who, in the name of Jehovah, promised them peace and safety if they remained; but threatened death by pestilence, famine, and sword, if they went down to Egypt. They went, however, and compelled Jeremiah himself to go with them; and it is alleged by tradition that they put him to death in that country for the ominous prophecies he continued to utter there.
NEBUZARADAN INVADES
Nebuzaradan soon after arrived in the country with the view of avenging the murder of Gedaliah and the massacre of the Chaldeans who were with him: but the country was so thin of inhabitants, in consequence of the secession to Egypt, that he could find no more than seven hundred and forty-five persons in the land, whom he sent into captivity beyond the Euphrates. Thus signally was the long predicted depopulation of the land completed; and although nomadic tribes wandered through the country, and the Edomites settled in, some of its southern parts, yet the land remained, on the whole, uninhabited, and ready for the Hebrews, whose return had as much been the subject of prophecy as their captivity had been.
For the clearer apprehension of the facts which have been stated, it will be desirable to trace the further operations of the Babylonians in those quarters.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR TAKES WHOLE REGION
The year after the conquest of Judea, Nebuchadnezzar resolved to take a severe revenge upon all the surrounding nations which had solicited the Judahites to a confederacy against him, or had encouraged them to rebel, although they now, for the most part, rejoiced in their destruction. These were the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Arabians, the Sidonians, Tyrians, and Philistines; nor did he forget the Egyptians, who had taken a foremost part inaction or intrigue against him. This had been foretold by the prophets. It had been foretold that all these nations were to be subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, and were assigned to share with the Hebrews the bondage of seventy years to that power. Some of them were conquered sooner and some later; but the end of this period was the common term for the deliverance of them all from their bondage to Babylon.
TYRE TAKEN
After Nebuchadnezzar had subdued the eastern and western states in his first campaign, he commenced the siege of the strong city of old Tyre, on the continent, in the year B.C. 584, being two years after the destruction of Jerusalem. This siege occupied thirteen years, a fact which illustrates, perhaps, not so much the strength of the place as the vitality of a commercial state. This is, however, only to intimate that during this period the city was invested by a Chaldean army; for many other important enterprises were undertaken and accomplished during the same period. It was during the siege that Nebuzaradan marched into Judea to avenge the murder of Gedaliah and the Chaldeans, as was just related.
EGYPT TAKEN
Before Tyre was taken, the inhabitants, having the command of the sea, fled with all their effects to the insular Tyre in its neighborhood; so that the Chaldean army found but little spoil to reward their long toil and patience in the siege. This had been foretold by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 29:18-20), but although Nebuchadnezzar and his army were to obtain “no wages for the great service they had served against Tyre,” in the long course of which “every head was made bald and every shoulder peeled,” yet as a compensation they were promised the plunder of “the land of Egypt, her multitude, her spoil, and her prey.” Accordingly, in the spring of the year B.C. 570, after the war with Tyre was finished, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt, and, from a concurrence of weakening circumstances in that country, was enabled to overrun the whole country from Migdol, its northern extremity, near the Red sea, to Syene, the southern, bordering upon Ethiopia. This he also subdued, together with the other auxiliaries of the Egyptians. The reigning king was the same Pharaoh-Hophra, or Apries, who was on the throne at the time Jerusalem was besieged, and whose faint and abortive motion to relieve his allies has been recorded. This proud and haughty tyrant was reduced to vassalage; and so wasted and depopulated was the land by the invaders, that it lay comparatively desolate for forty years. The king was himself soon after defeated and captured by his discontented and revolted subjects, under Amasis, who was made king, and who was reluctantly compelled by the clamors of the soldiers to inflict death upon his predecessor. Amasis was confirmed in the throne by the Assyrian king.