was coming to the aid of the Egyptians, he hurried on to reinforce the
army he had sent against him, intending to take Jerusalem on his way
back. But on the night when the two armies were in sight of each other,
ere the battle, the blast of death passed over the Assyrians; and in
early morning the host lay dead, not by the sword, but by the breath of
the Lord, and Sennacherib was left to return without the men in whom he
had trusted! Even heathens recorded this deliverance, but they strangely
altered the story. They said that it was the prayer of the Egyptian king
that prevailed on his gods to send a multitude of mice into the enemy's
camp, to gnaw all the bow-strings, so that they could not fight; and
they showed a statue of the king with a mouse in his hand, which was,
they said, a memorial of the wonder.
Sennacherib, in rage and fury, cruelly persecuted the Israelites at
Nineveh for their connection with the Jews; and then it was that the
pious Tobit buried the corpses that were cast in the street until he
lost his sight, afterwards so wonderfully restored. Sennacherib was
murdered in the year 720 by two of his sons, while worshipping his god
Nisroch; and another son, Esarhaddon, became king.
Esarhaddon, who is known by many different names, soon after came out
and marauded all over the adjacent country; and it is believed that
it was about this time that Bethulia was so bravely defended, and the
Ninevite general slain by the craft and courage of Judith. Esarhaddon
took away all the remaining Israelites from their country, and filled
it up with Phoenicians and Medes from cities which had been conquered.
These, bringing their idols into the land of the Lord, were chastised
with lions; and, begging to be taught to worship the God of the land,
had priests sent them, who taught them some of the truth, though very
imperfectly; and these new inhabitants were called Samaritans.
In the time of Hezekiah, many more of the Psalms than had been before
collected, were written down and applied to the Temple Service. The
latter part of the Proverbs of Solomon were first copied out, and the
inspired words of the prophets began to be added to the Scriptures.
Joel's date is unfixed, but Hosea, Amos, and Jonah, had recently been
prophesying, and the glorious evangelical predictions of Isaiah and
Micah were poured out throughout this reign, those of Isaiah ranging
from the humiliation and Passion of the Redeemer, to the ingathering of
the nations to His Kingdom, and Micah marking out the little Bethlehem
as the birth-place of "Him whose goings are from everlasting."
Manasseh, the son of the good Hezekiah, began to reign in 699. He was
in his first years savagely wicked, and very idolatrous. It is believed
that he caused the great evangelical prophet, Isaiah, to be put to death
by being sawn asunder, and he set an image in the Temple itself. He
soon brought down his punishment on his head, for the Assyrian captains
invaded Judea, and took him captive, dragging him in chains to Babylon.
There he repented, and humbled himself with so contrite a heart, that
God had mercy on him, and caused his enemies to restore him to his
throne; but the free days of Judah were over, and they were thenceforth
subjects, paying tribute to the King of Assyria, and Manasseh was only a
tributary for the many remaining years of his reign, while he strove in
vain to undo the evil he had done by bringing in idolatry.
Meantime the greatness of Nineveh came to an end. The Babylonians
and Medes revolted against it, and it was ruined in the year 612.
Sardanapalus succeeded his father at Nineveh, but was weak and
luxurious. His brother, Saracus, was so like him, that what seems really
to have been the end of Saracus, is generally told of Sardanapalus. He
was so weary of all amusement and delight, that, by way of change, he
would dress like his wives, and spin and embroider with them, and he
even offered huge rewards to anyone who would invent a new pleasure. He
said his epitaph should be, that he carried with him that which he had
eaten, which, said wise men, was a fit motto only for a pig, not a man.
At last his carelessness and violence provoked the Babylonians and Medes
to rise against him, and they besieged his city; but he took no notice,
and feasted on, putting his trust in an old prophecy, (perhaps Nahum's,)
that nothing should harm Nineveh till the river became her enemy. At
last he heard that the Tigris had overflowed, and broken down a part of
the wall; and so giving himself up, he shut himself up in his palace,
and setting fire to it, burnt himself with all his wives, slaves, and
treasures, rather than be taken by the enemy. So ended Nineveh, in the
year 612. No one ever lived there again; the river made part a swamp,
and the rest was covered with sand brought by the desert winds. It was
all ruin and desolation; but of late years many of its mighty remains
have been brought to our country, as witnesses of the dealings of God
with His people's foes.
LESSON X.
THE CAPTIVITY.
"Is this the city that men call the perfection of beauty, the joy of the
whole earth?"--_Larn._ ii. 15.
Manasseh's son, Amon, undid all the reformation of his latter years, and
brought back idolatry; and indeed, the whole Jewish people had become so
corrupt, that even when Amon was murdered in 642, after only reigning
two years, and better days came back with the good Josiah, it was with
almost all of them only a change of the outside, and not of the heart.
Josiah was but eight years old when he came to the throne, and at
sixteen he began to rule, seeking the Lord earnestly with his whole
heart, as David and Hezekiah alone had done before him. One of his first
acts was to purify the Temple, and in so doing, the book of the Law
of Moses was found, cast aside, and forgotten by all. Josiah bade
the scribes read it aloud, and then for the first time he heard what
blessings Judah had forfeited, what curses she had deserved, and how
black was her disobedience in the sight of God. Well might he rend his
clothes, weep aloud, and send to the prophetess Huldah, to ask whether
the anger of the Lord could yet be turned aside. She made answer by
the word of the God of Justice, that the doom must come on the guilty
nation, but that in His mercy, He would spare Josiah the sight of the
ruin, and that he should be gathered into his grave in peace; and at the
same time Zephaniah likewise spoke of judgment, and Jeremiah, the priest
of Anathoth, was foretelling that treacherous Judah should soon suffer
like backsliding Israel. Yet even this hopeless future did not daunt
Josiah's loving heart from doing his best. He collected his people, and
renewed the Covenant, he rooted out every trace of idolatry, even more
thoroughly than Hezekiah had done, overthrowing even Solomon's idol
temples; and he went to Bethel, which he seems to have held under the
King of Assyria, and defiled the old altar there by burning bones on it,
as the disobedient prophet had foretold of him by name, when that altar
was first set up. He likewise caused copies of the Law to be made, so
that it might never be lost again; and the Jews have a story, that
knowing the Temple was to be destroyed, he saved the Ark of the
Covenant, Aaron's rod, and the pot of manna, from sacrilege, by hiding
them away in the hollow of Mount Nebo, where they have never since been
found; but this is quite uncertain.
Josiah lived between two mighty powers; the King of Babylon, who had
newly taken Nineveh, and Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt, a very bold and
able man, who hired Phoenician ships to sail round Africa, and then did
not believe the crews when they came back, because they said they had
seen the sun to the north at noon, and wool growing on trees. He tried
to cut a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea; and wishing to check the
power of Babylon, he brought an army by sea to make war upon Assyria,
landing at Acre under Mount Carmel, and intending to march through
Gilead. Josiah, being a tributary of Babylon, thought it his duty to
endeavour to stop him, and going out to battle with him at Megiddo, was
there mortally wounded, and died on his way home, in the year 611. The
mourning of the Jews over their good king was so bitter, that it was a
proverb long after; and they had indeed reason to lament, for he was the
last who stood between them and their sin and their punishment.
Jehoahaz, or Shallum, his third son, a wicked young man, only reigned
while Necho was fighting a battle with the Babylonians on the Euphrates,
and then was carried off in chains to Egypt, while Necho set up Eliakim,
or Jehoiakim, another brother, in his stead. Jehoiakim was idolatrous,
cruel, and violent; he persecuted the prophets, and did everything
to draw on himself the punishment of Heaven. Necho, making another
invasion, was defeated by the great Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and
hunted back by him into Egypt. On his way Nebuchadnezzar seized
Jerusalem, in the year 606, and carried off some of the treasures of the
Temple, and many of the royal family, to Babylon, among them the four
holy children, but he let Jehoiakim continue to reign as his vassal.
Jeremiah prophesied that the time of captivity and desolation should
last seventy years from this time, but the worst was not yet come.
Jehoiakim was bent on trusting for help to the Egyptians, who had made
him king, and treated Jeremiah as a traitor for counselling him to be
loyal to the Assyrians; he threw Jeremiah into prison, and when Baruch
read the roll of his prophecies in the Temple, he caused it to be cut to
pieces and destroyed. At last he rebelled, relying on help from
Egypt, but it did not come, for Necho was dying; and in the year 598,
Nebuchadnezzar himself came up against Jerusalem, and besieged it.
Jehoiakim died in the midst of the war, and his equally wicked son,
Jehoiachin, Coniah, or Jeconiah, was soon forced to come out, and
surrender to Nebuchadnezzar, who dishonoured his father's corpse, and
carried him away to Babylon, with the chief treasures of the Temple, and
a great multitude of warriors and mechanics. Among them was the prophet
Ezekiel, who, on the banks of the Chebar, saw mighty visions of the
chariot of God borne up by the Cherubim; and while he rebuked the
present Jews for their crimes, promised restoration, and beheld the new
and more perfect Building of God measured out by the angel. A marble
cylinder with most of this prophecy engraven on it in Assyrian
characters, has lately been found in the ruins near the Tigris.
The last son of Josiah, Mattanias, or Zedekiah, was set up as king, and
reigned for eleven years; like his brothers, wavering and sinning, and
trusting to false prophets, instead of Jeremiah, who gave him hopes of
rest, if he would only bear his present fallen state meekly, and not
trust to Egypt. The counsellors who loved Egypt, however, persuaded him
to rebel, as Pharaoh Hophra was actually coming out to his assistance;
and he put Jeremiah into prison for prophesying that he would bring
ruin on himself, Nebuchadnezzar soon marched upon him, and besieged
Jerusalem; and his friend, Pharaoh Hophra, left him to his fate, showing
himself the broken reed that Jeremiah had said he would prove. The siege
of Jerusalem lasted a year, and no one suffered more than the prophet,
who was thrown into a noisome prison, and afterwards lowered into a pit,
where he nearly died; but not for all this did he cease to denounce the
judgments of God on the rebellious city. Horrible famine prevailed, and
the streets were full of dead; but Jeremiah told the king, that if he
would go out and make terms with Nebuchadnezzar all might yet be saved.
But Zedekiah would not listen, and at last broke out with his men of war
to cut his way through the enemy. His self-will met its deserts; he was
taken by Nebuzaradan, the captain who had been left to carry on the
siege, and brought a prisoner to Babylon, after his sons had been slain
in his very sight, and his eyes then put out, according to a prophecy of
Ezekiel, which he is said to have thought impossible; namely, that he
should die at Babylon, and yet never see it.
The Temple was stripped of the last remains of its glory, and utterly
overthrown, the walls were broken down, and the place left desolate; the
Edomites who were in the conqueror's army savagely exulting in the fall
of their kindred nation; but both Psalm cxxxvii. and the Prophet Obadiah
spoke of vengeance in store for them likewise. All the Jews of high rank
were carried away, and none left but the poorer sort, who were to till
the ground under a ruler named Gedaliah. Jeremiah, who was offered his
choice of going to Babylon or remaining in Judea, preferred to continue
near the once glorious city, whose solitude and ruin he bewailed in the
mournful Book of Lamentations; and he did his utmost to persuade the
remaining Jews to rest quietly under the dominion of Assyria. Had they
done so, there would yet have been peace; but Ishmael, a prince of the
seed royal, who had fled to the Ammonites during the invasion, came
back, and in the hope of making himself king murdered Gedaliah at a
harvest feast, with many Jews and Chaldeans, and was on his way to his
friend, the King of Ammon, when Johanan, a friend of Gedaliah, came upon
him and slew many of his party, so that he escaped with only eight men
to the Ammonites. So shocked were the Jews at this murder of Gedaliah,
that they ever after kept a fast on the anniversary. Johanan now
asked counsel from Jeremiah, who still enjoined him to submit to the
Assyrians, but assured him that if he went to Egypt it would only be to
share the ruin of that country; but Johanan and his friends would not
listen, and carried all the remnant of Judah, and Jeremiah himself, off
by force into Egypt. All this happened in the miserable year 588, and
Jerusalem remained utterly waste, the land enjoying a long sabbath of
desolation, What became of Jeremiah afterwards is not known; he is said
to have been stoned in Egypt, but this is not at all certain. He left
behind him the promise that a Deliverer should come--the Lord our
Righteousness--and that the former redemption out of bondage in Egypt
should be as nothing in comparison with the ingathering of the New
Covenant from the north country and from all countries; also that the
New Covenant should be within, written upon the hearts and minds of the
faithful.
LESSON XI.
BABYLON.
"By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee,
O Sion."--_Psalm_ cxxxvii, 1.
Babylon, the city which was to be the place of captivity of the Jews,
was the home of the Chaldeans, who are believed not to have been the
sons of Gush, like the Assyrians whom they had conquered at Nineveh,
but to have been at first a wandering tribe of the north, and to have
descended from Japhet. They had nearly the same gods as the Ninevites,
but thought the special protector of their city was Bel-Merodach, the
name by which they called the planet Jupiter. They were such great
observers of the courses of the stars, that astronomy is said to have
begun with them; but this was chiefly because they fancied that the
heavenly bodies would help them to foretel coming events, for they put
great faith in soothsayers. They settled upon the bank of the Euphrates,
near the ruins of the Tower of Babel, round which a city arose,
sometimes free, sometimes under the power of the King of Nineveh.
In the time of the weak and luxurious Saracus, Nabopolassar was
governor of Babylon. He joined himself to the Medea, giving his son,
Nebuchadnezzar, in marriage to the Median Princess Amytis; and as has
already been said, the two nations together destroyed Nineveh,
after which, Babylon became the head of the Assyrian Empire, and
Nebuchadnezzar was the king.
He made the city exceedingly grand and beautiful. It was fifty five
miles in circuit, square, surrounded by a wall eighty-seven feet thick,
and three hundred and fifty high, with houses and a street on the top,
and an enormous ditch filled with water all round, another lesser wall
some way within. There were one hundred brazen gates in the wall,
besides two larger gateways upon the Euphrates, which ran through the
middle, dividing the city into two parts. It was full of streets and
houses, with such fields and vineyards, that it was like a whole country
walled in; and the soil was exceedingly rich, being all brought down
from the Armenian hills by the Euphrates. As this river rose in the
mountains of Armenia, it used to overflow in the spring, when the snows
melted and swelled the stream; but to prevent mischief, the country was
covered with a network of canals, to draw off the water in safety. The
pride of the city was the Temple of Bel, which is thought to have been
built on a fragment of the Tower of Babel. It was a pile of enormous
height, with seven stages in honour of the seven planets then known, and
with a winding ascent leading from one to the other. On the top was the
shrine, where stood Bel's golden image, twelve cubits high, and before
it a golden table where meats and wine were served up to him. On either
side of the river were two palaces, joined together by a bridge, and the
nearer one, four miles round, with wonderful grounds, containing what
were called the hanging gardens, namely, a hill which Nebuchadnezzar
had caused to be raised by heaping up earth, and planted with trees, to
please his Median queen, whose eye pined for her native mountains in the
flats of Babylon.
There must have been other eyes at Babylon wearying for their own free
heights, for there the captives of Judah bore the punishment of their
fathers' sins and their own, and repented so completely, that they never
returned to their idolatry. When in 606, Nebuchadnezzar carried to
Babylon Jehoiachin and the nobles of Judah, he commanded that some
of the royal children should be brought up as slaves to serve in his
palace, and gave them new names after his gods. Daniel, Ananias, Azarias,
and Misael, gave their first proof of their obedience to the Law of
their God in their exile and slavery, by denying themselves the choice
meats set before them, lest they should eat of some forbidden thing, and
living only on dry beans and water. So blessed was their abstinence,
that they excelled all the other youths both in beauty and in wisdom,
and were soon promoted above them. Soon after, Daniel was shown to be
a prophet, for God inspired him, not merely with the meaning of
Nebuchadnezzar's perplexing dream, but revealed to him the dream itself,
which the king had forgotten. That dream was the emblematic history of
the world. It was an image with a head of gold, shoulders of silver,
thighs of brass, legs of iron, feet partly of iron, partly of clay, all
overthrown together by a stone cut out without hands from a mountain.
Great Babylon was the head, soon to give way to the less splendid
Persian power, then again to the Greek dominion, and lastly to the iron
rule of Rome, which would grow weak and mixed with miry clay, till at
last all would be overthrown and subdued by the Stone which the builders
rejected.
After this wonderful interpretation, Daniel became a chief ruler under
Nebuchadnezzar, and even in his youth, his name was a very proverb for
wisdom and holiness. He judged among the Jews, and confuted the two
wicked elders who sought to bring about the death of Susanna; and he
probably stood too high to be accused, when, soon after the taking of
Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar threw the three other princes into the fiery
furnace, for refusing to bow down to the golden image on the plains of
Dura. Then the fiery blast was to them as a moist whistling wind, and
even the tyrant beheld the Form like the Son of God, walking with them
in the midst of the flame, while they sung that hymn which calls every
created thing to praise the Lord. The miracle seems not to have been
witnessed by a heart hardened against belief Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed
the glory of the God who could work such miracles, and whose instrument
of vengeance he himself was. Edom was soon after conquered by
Nebuchadnezzar, thus fulfilling many prophecies.
Another great work which was set for him to do, was to give the first
great overthrow to the Phoenicians, and fulfil the prophecies of Isaiah
and Ezekiel, by destroying Tyre. The siege lasted thirteen years, and
the besiegers suffered as much as the besieged, till, as Ezekiel had
foretold, every head was bald, every shoulder peeled with the burdens
that were carried; but at last it was taken in the year 573, and so
utterly destroyed, that not a trace was left of it. It had been said
by Isaiah, that after seventy years Tyre should take her harp and sing
again, and return for a time to her former splendour and corruption;
and thus it happened, for a new Tyre arose upon a little island at some
little distance from the shore.
Ezekiel had promised the Chaldeans that the toils of Tyre should be
repaid by the spoil of Egypt, the land that was henceforth to be a slave
for ever; and in 574, Nebuchadnezzar marched thither, and conquered
it with the utmost ease, there being at that time a quarrel among the
Egyptians, which weakened their hands; Hophra, the last of the Pharaohs,
was slain by a rebel, and Egypt has never more been free, or
under native rulers. The Ammonites too, were put down for ever by
Nebuchadnezzar, and he came home puffed up with the pride of conquest.
Then came another warning dream, of a tree, great and spreading, the
rest and stay of bird and beast, till a watcher and a holy one came down
and bade that it should be cut down, and only a stump to be left, to be
wet with the dew of Heaven until it should recover. It was no wonder
that Daniel was astonished for one hour ere he explained the vision, which
bore that the great conqueror should lose his reason, be chased from
the haunts of men, and live like the beasts, with hair like eagle's
feathers, and nails like eagle's claws. Nebuchadnezzar does not seem to
have punished him for thus revealing the will of God; and time went on,
while the city grew more magnificent under the builder's hand, till at
last, in the pride of his heart, the king made his boast, "Is not this
great Babylon that I have builded, for the house of the kingdom, and for
the honour of my majesty?"
That moment, the watcher cried from Heaven, and sense and strength fled
from the mighty Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from men, and lived seven
years among the beasts of the field, till for one year, reason was
mercifully restored to him, and he made the best use of it in publishing
to all the world the story of his pride and of his fall, and with all
his heart honouring the King of Heaven, whose works are truth, and His
ways are judgment.
This humbled conqueror died in 563, and was succeeded by his son,
Evil-Merodach, who released the captive Jehoiachin, and made him eat at
his own table until his death. Two more kings succeeded, each reigning
but a few years, and then came Belshazzar, in the first year of whose
reign Daniel had a vision, where the like events as were shown by the
dream of Nebuchadnezzar, were foreshadowed under the form of animals,
typifying the several empires. Four beasts came from the sea: the
lion with eagle's wings was his own Assyria, but was set aside by the
devouring bear of Persia; then followed the flying four-headed leopard
of Greece; and lastly, the dreadful and terrible destroying creature,
meaning Rome, which ground with iron teeth, and brake all in pieces. It
had ten horns, which are believed to mean the kingdoms into which Rome
was divided in later times, and one which destroyed some of the others,
and became blasphemous, till all was lost in an awful manifestation of
the Ancient of Days coming to judgment. This little horn is thought to
mean the spirit of Antichrist, and the great falling away which is to
prevail in the latter days, but the end is not yet.