are now remarkable for their scorpions." The inhabitants shall be cut off from Ashdod. Although the Christian traveller must yield the palm to Volney,* as the topographer of prophecy, and although supplementary evidence be not requisite, yet a place is here willingly given to the following just observations. "Ashkelon was one of the proudest satrapies of the lords of the Philistines; now there is not an inhabitant within its walls: and the prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled. The king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited. When the prophecy was uttered, both cities were in an equally flourishing condition: and nothing but the prescience of Heaven could pronounce on which of the two, and in what manner, the vial of its wrath should be poured out. Gaza is truly without a king. The lofty towers of Ashkelon lie scattered on the ground, and the ruins within its walls do not shelter a human being. How is the wrath of man made to praise his Creator! Hath he not said, and shall he not do it? The oracle was delivered by the mouth of the prophet more than five hundred years before the Christian era, and we beheld its accomplishment eighteen hundred years after that event."+ Cogent and just as the reasoning is, the facts stated by Volney give wider scope for an irresistible argument. The fate of one city is not only distinguished from that of another; but the varied aspect of the country itself, the dwellings and cottages for shepherds in one part, and that very region named, the rest of the land destroyed and uninhabited, a desert, and abandoned to the flocks of the wandering Arabs; Gaza, bereaved of a king, a defenceless village, destitute of all its fortifications; Ashkelon, a desolation, and without an inhabitant; the inhabitants also cut off from Ashdod, as reptiles tenanted it instead of men-form in each instance a specific pre * Had Volney been a believer, had he "sought out of the book of the Lord and read," and had he applied all the facts which he knew in illustration of the prophecies, how completely would he have proved their inspiration! But it is well for the cause of truth that such a witness was himself an unbeliever; for his evidence, in many an instance, comes so very close to the predictions, that his testimony, in the relation of positive. facts, would have been utterly discredited, and held as purposely adapted to the very words of prophecy, by those who otherwise lent a greedy ear to his utterance of some of the wildest fancies and most gross untruths that ever emanated from the mind of man, or ever entered into a deceitful heart. He who so artfully could pervert the truth falls the victim of facts stated by himself. Richardson's Travels, vol. ii. p. 204. diction and a recorded fact, and present such a view of the existing state of Philistia as renders it difficult to determine, from the strictest accordance that prevails between both, whether the inspired penman or the defamer of Scripture give the more vivid description. Nor is there any obscurity whatever, in any one of the circumstances, or in any part of the proof. The coincidence is too glaring, even for wilful blindness not to discern; and to all the least versed in general history the priority of the predictions to the events is equally obvious. And such was the natural fertility of the country, and such was the strength and celebrity of the cities, that no conjecture possessing the least shadow of plausibility can be formed in what manner any of these events could possibly have been thought of, even for many centuries after "the vision and prophecy" were sealed. After that period Gaza defied the power of Alexander the Great, and withstood for two months a hard-pressed siege. The army with which he soon afterward overthrew the Persian empire having there, as well as at Tyre, been checked or delayed in the first flush of conquest, and he himself having been twice wounded in desperate attempts to storm the city, the proud and enraged King of Macedon, with all the cruelty of a brutish heart, and boasting of himself as a second Achilles, dragged at his chariot wheels the intrepid general who had defended it twice around the walls of Gaza.* Ashkelon was no less celebrated for the excellence of its wines than for the strength of its fortifications.† And of Ashdod it is related by an eminent ancient historian, not only that it was a great city, but that it withstood the longest siege recorded in history (it may almost be said either of prior or of later date), having been besieged for the space of twenty-nine years by Psymatticus, king of Egypt. Strabo, after the commencement of the Christian era, classes its citizens among the chief inhabitants of Syria. Each of these cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, was the see of a bishop from the days of Constantine to the invasion of the Saracens. And, as a decisive proof of their existence as cities long subsequent to the delivery of the predictions, it may further be remarked, that different coins of each of these very cities are extant, and are copied * Quinti Curtii, lib. iv. cap. 26. † Relandi Palest. 341, 586. The and described in several accounts of ancient coins.* once princely magnificence of Gaza is still attested by the "ruins of white marble ;" and the house of the present aga is composed of fragments of ancient columns, cornices, &c.; and in the courtyard, and immured in the wall, are shafts and capitals of granite columns.† In short, cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks, partially scattered along the seacoast, are now truly the best substitutes for populous cities that the once powerful realm of Philistia can produce; and the remnant of that land which gave titles and grandeur to the lords of the Philistines is destroyed. Gaza, the chief of its satrapies, "the abode of luxury and opulence," now bereaved of its king, and bald of all its fortifications, is the defenceless residence of a subsidiary ruler of a devastated province; and, in kindred degradation, ornaments of its once splendid edifices are now bedded in a wall that forms an enclosure for beasts. A handful of men could now take unobstructed possession of that place, where a strong city opposed the entrance, and defied, for a time, the power of the conqueror of the world. The walls, the dwellings, and the people of Ashkelon have all perished; and though its name was in the time of the crusades shouted in triumph throughout every land in Europe, it is now literally without an inhabitant. And Ashdod, which withstood a siege treble the duration of that of Troy, and thus outrivalled far the boast of Alexander at Gaza, has, in verification of "the word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword," been cut off, and has fallen before it to nothing. There is yet another city which was noted by the prophets, the very want of any information respecting which, and the absence of its name from several modern maps of Palestine, while the sites of other ruined cities are marked, are really the best confirmation of the truth of the prophecy that could possibly be given. Ekron shall be rooted up. It is rooted up. It was one of the chief cities of the Philistines; but though Gaza still subsists, and while Ashkelon and Ashdod retain their names in their ruins, the very name of Ekron is missing.‡ * Relandi Palest. p. 595, 609, 797. † General Straton's MS. In the map prefixed to Dr. Shaw's Travels, Akron is indeed marked; but it is placed close upon the seacoast, whereas Ekron was situated in the interior, and was at least ten miles distant. Shaw did not visit the spot. Dr Richardson passed some ruins near to Ashdod, and conjectures that they were The wonderful contrast in each particular, whether in respect to the land or to the cities of the Philistines, is the exact counterpart of the literal prediction; and having the testimony of Volney to all the facts, and also indisputable evidence of the great priority of the predictions to the events, what more complete or clearer proof could there be that each and all of them emanated from the prescience of Heaven? The remaining boundary of Judea was the mountains of LEBANON on the north. Lebanon was celebrated for the extent of its forests, and particularly for the size and excellence of its cedars.* It abounded also with the pine, the cypress, and the vine, &c. But, describing what it now is, Volney says, "Towards Lebanon the mountains are lofty, but they are covered in many places with as much earth as fits them for cultivation by industry and labour. There, amid the crags of the rocks, may be seen the not very magnificent remains of the boasted cedars."+ The words of the prophets of Israel answer the sarcasm, and convert it into a testimony of the truth:-" Lebanon is ashamed, and hewn down. The high ones of stature shall be hewn down; Lebanon shall fall mightily."‡ "Upon the mountains, and in all the valleys, his branches are fallen; to the end that none of all the trees by the water exalt themselves for their height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs."§ "Open_thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars. probably Ekron. But neither does the site of them correspond with that of Ekron, which, according to Eusebius, lay between Ashdod and Jamnia, towards the east, or inland. Vide Relan. Pal. 77. Any diversity of opinion respecting its site is not the least conclusive proof that it is rooted up. * Relandi Palest. p. 320, 379. Tacit. Hist. lib. v. cap. vi. Travels, vol. i. p. 292.-Volney remarks in a note, that there are but four or five of those trees which deserve any notice; and in a note, it may be added, from the words of Isaiah,-the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them, c. x. 19. Could not the infidel write a brief note, or state a minute fact, without illustrating a prophecy? Maundrell, who visited Lebanon in the end of the seventeenth century, and to whose accuracy in other matters all subsequent travellers who refer to him bear witness, describes some of the cedars near the top of the mountain as "very old, and of a prodigious bulk, and others younger of a smaller size." Of the former he could reckon up only sixteen. He measured the largest, and found it above twelve yards in girth. Such trees, however few in number, show that the cedars of Lebanon had once been no vain boast. But after the lapse of more than a century, not a single tree of such dimensions is now to be seen. Of those which now remain, as visited by Captains Irby and Mangles, there are about fifty in whole, on a single small eminence, from which spot the cedars are the only trees to be seen in Lebanon, p. 209. Ezek. xxxi. 12, 14. Isa. xxxiii. 9; x. 33, 44. The cedar is fallen; the forest of the vintage is come down."* Such are the prophecies which explicitly and avowedly referred to the land of Judea and to the surrounding states. And such are the facts drawn from the narratives of travellers, and given, in general, in their own words, which substantiate their truth; though without any allusion, but in a few solitary instances, to the predictions which they amply verify. The most unsuspected evidence has been selected; and the far greater part is so fully corroborated and illustrated by other testimony, as to bid.defiance to skepticism. The prophecies and the proofs of their fulfilment are so numerous, that it is impossible to concentrate them in a single view without the exclusion of many; and they are, upon a simple comparison, so obvious and striking, that any attempt at their further elucidation must hazard the obscuring of their clearness and the enfeebling of their force. There is no ambiguity in the prophecies themselves, for they can bear no other interpretation but what is descriptive of the actual events. There can be no question of their genuineness or antiquity, for the countries whose future history they unveiled contained several millions of inhabitants, and numerous flourishing cities, at a period centuries subsequent to the delivery, the translation, and publication of the prophecies, and when the regular and public perusal of their Scriptures was the law and the practice of the Israelites; and they have only gradually been reduced to their existing state of long-prophesied desolation. There could not possibly have been any human means of the foresight of facts so many and so marvellous; for every natural appearance contradicted, and every historical fact condemned the supposition: and nothing but continued oppression and a succession of worse than Gothic desolators,-no government on earth but the Turkish, no spoliators but the Arabs, could have converted such natural fertility into such utter and permanent desolation. Could it have been foreseen,' that, after the lapse of some hundred years, no interval of prosperity or peaceful security would occur throughout many ensuing generations, to revive its deadened energies, or to rescue from uninterrupted desolation one of the richest and one of the most salubrious regions * Zech. xi. 1, 2. |