Heb, caused to come forth.

32 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel began 'Jotham the son of Uzziah king of Judah to reign.

35 Five and twenty years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok.

34 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD: he did according to all that his father Uzziah had done.

35 Howbeit the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burned

incense still in the high places. He built the higher gate of the house of the LORD.

36 Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

37 In those days the LORD began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah.

38 And Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father: and Ahaz his son reigned in his stead.

62 Chron. 27. 1.

Verse 19. "Pul, the king of Assyria."-Here the empire of Assyria first rises to our notice; not, however, first, chronologically, as the mission of Jonah to its capital took place at a still earlier date-thirty years earlier, according to Dr. Hales. Of Nineveh, the capital of this empire, we shall speak in the books of Jonah and Nahum. Its foundation, as we have seen, is noticed in the tenth chapter of Genesis, not as the metropolis of a kingdom, but as one, and not the most important, of several towns there mentioned. Its foundation as a metropolis and a great city must be attributed to Ninus II., whose reign began B.C. 1252, about the time of Jephthah, and who, from all that appears, was the first who made Assyria a powerful state. This is proved by the concurrent testimony of Herodotus, Appian, and Dionysias of Halicarnassus, whose united evidence has been ably analyzed by Dr. Hales; so that the accounts of Ctesias, who places the beginning of this great king's reign B.c. 2127, that is, prior to the birth of Abraham, evidently exemplifies the ingenious process by which nations contrived to assign a preposterous antiquity to their greatness. It is clear by this account, that Ninus II., the true founder of the Assyrian empire, is confounded with that "mighty hunter" Nimrod, or Ni..us I.—the victories and acts of the latter being assigned with much exaggeration to the former, while, to countenance the story, an imaginary dynasty of twenty-four kings is made to precede the real founder of the empire. If so mighty an empire had existed from the time of Abraham, it is incredible that no notice of it should have been found in all the Scripture. Indeed, the dynasty, commencing with Ninus II., is not mentioned in the holy books, till the mission of Jonah; when, however, it is clear that Nineveh, that eminently "great city," was the capital of an important empire, which had not, however, until the period of the present text, extended its limits west of the Euphrates, and thereby come into offensive contact with the Hebrew kingdoms. It is also only about this time that we begin to see, with any distinctness, into the historical notices of Assyria which are to be found in the Greek authors.

The Scripture dynasty of Assyrian kings begins with that unnamed "king of Nineveh" who repented at the prophecy of Jonah. Dr. Hales thinks it probable that Pul was his son, and apparently the second Belus of the Greek historians, who built the temple of that name at Babylon, which was a chief city of the Assyrian empire. He is the first that we find west of the Euphrates, and this circumstance it was, probably, that drew the attention of the Greeks towards him and his empire. To avert the immediate danger of this invasion cost the king of Israel 375,000%. of our money, raised by a tax of nearly six guineas each upon his more wealthy subjects.

29. "Tiglath-pileser."-This conqueror seems to have been the son of Pul. It is the probable conjecture of Sir Isaae Newton (admitted by Hales), that at Pul's death his dominions were divided between his two sons; when the sovereignty of Assyria was given to the elder, Tiglath-pileser; and the prefecture of Babylon to the younger, Nabonassar, from the date of whose reign or government the celebrated era of that name took its rise, B.C. 747. The cause of this incursion is given in the next chapter. The kings of Judah, being close pressed by the kings of Israel and Syria, bribed the Assyrian, with the spoils of the Temple and the promise of vassalage, to come to his assistance. Tiglathpileser willingly availed himself of the opportunity of extending his own power westward: he slew the king of Syria, and took Damascus, transporting its inhabitants to Kir (Kurdistan), or Assyria Proper, and then proceeded to deal out the same bitter portion to Israel. The trans-Jordanic tribes of Reuben, Gad and half-Manasseh, he removed to Media, and also the other half of Manasseh that was settled in Galilee. This was the first captivity: but some understand that the trans-Jordanic tribes were removed by Pul, and the inhabitants of Galilee only by his son (compare this verse with 1 Chron. v. 26). The king of Judah had small cause to congratulate himself on this result, for, as Prideaux remarks, "Instead of two petty princes, whom he had afore for his neighbours, and with either of which he was well able to cope, he had now this mighty king for his neighbour, against whom no power of the land was sufficient to make any resistance, and the ill effect whereof both Israel and Judah did afterwards sufficiently feel." The name of Tiglath-pileser has had various interpretations, some of them very absurd. Might not the distinctive part of it— Tiglath," be taken from the river Tigris, on which his capital stood, and which, to this day, bears the name of Diglath? D and T are letters continually changed for each other. The name might then mean "great lord of the Tigris." The title "lord of the river" (Tigris) is now borne by an Arab sheikh who received it from the pasha of Bagdad. "Janoah."-A place of this name is mentioned in Josh. xvi. 6, as in the tribe of Ephraim, and which Jerome describes as being in his time a village in Acrabatene, twelve miles to the east of Neapolis or Shechem. But Bonfrere thinks, not without reason, that the present text requires the Janoah it mentions to be a distinct place in the tribe of Naphtali, in which all the other places here named were situated.

66

CHAPTER XVI.

1 Ahaz's wicked reign. 5 Ahaz, assailed by Rezin and Pekah, hireth Tiglath-pileser against them. 10 Ahaz, sending a pattern of an altar from Da

mascus to Urijah, diverteth the brasen altar to his own devotion. 17 He spoileth the temple. 19 Hezekiah succeedeth him.

IN 'the seventeenth year of Pekah the son

12 Chron. 28. 1.

4 Heb, which were his.

Chap. xvi.-This chapter corresponds generally to 2 Chron. xxviii., which is longer than this, and contains several facts and details of circumstances which this does not comprehend. On the other hand, the taking of Elath by the Syrians (verse 7 of the present chapter), which is a very important event, involving, as it must have done, the final loss of whatever commerce the Hebrews may have maintained by the way of the Red Sea, is not mentioned in the parallel text of Chronicles. Neither do we find there any mention of the altar, which was made after the pattern the king sent from Damascus; although it is there generally stated that Ahaz worshipped the gods of Damascus, and built altars (for such worship doubtless) in every corner of Jerusalem. His journey to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser is also unnoticed in Chronicles: but it is important to observe that it is there clearly stated (verse 20), that the formidable Assyrian whose assistance he had so unworthily purchased, came indeed, "and distressed him, but strengthened him not." Thus most justly did the insulted Jehovah punish his apostacy and wickedness, and demonstrate the rottenness of the reeds on which he leaned. For some illustrative observations we refer to the parallel passage.

groves in every high hill, and under every green tree:

11 And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger:

12 For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, "Ye shall not do this thing.

13 Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, 'by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, "Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.

14 Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God.

15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.

16 And they left all the commandments. of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

17 And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

19 Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made.

20 And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.

21 For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin.

SCULPTURE OF THE CAPTIVITY