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31 king of the Chaldeans slain: And Darius the Mede

his Maker. For pride is the beginning of sin, and he that hath it shall pour out abomination. The Lord hath cast down the thrones of proud princes, and set up the meek in their stead. The Lord hath plucked up the roots of the proud nations, and planted the lowly in their place. The Lord overthrew countries of the heathen, and hath made their memorial to cease from the earth. Pride was not made for man, nor furious anger for them that are born of a woman."

The fall of Babylon was predicted by Isaiah and Habakuk; and the circumstances of its fall were minutely foretold by the prophet Jeremiah, Chap. li. the 30th and following verses: By comparing this passage with the accounts given by Herodotus, lib. 1, Xenophon in his Cyrop. and the subsequent Historians, we shall probably be inclined to think it affords as fine an illustration of one sort of the oratorical figure, ро оμμаtwy Tolely, as was ever delineated. For the method practised by Cyrus to surprise the city by draining that part of the Euphrates which ran through it, together with many other curious particulars relating to Babylon, see Bishop Lowth on Isai. xiii. 19. Cyrus having entered the city on a festal night, advanced with his army towards the palace, and having by the assistance of Gadatas and Gobryas, as we learn from Xenophon, killed the guards, they entered the room where the King was, and slew him, and those that were with him. It seems not improbable likewise, according to Dr. Blayney's ingenious suggestion on Jeremiah, li. 32, that they burned the houses of the city, or at least the advanced buildings in their progress, and forced the citizens to quit them in the greatest consternation; for they came upon them with such surprise, that, according to Herodotus, "they had passed through the gates, which were left open in this riotous night, and had taken the extreme parts of the city, before those who inhabited the middle parts knew of the capture," lib. i. p. 77. Travellers in general agree that there are no exact traces to be found of this once famous city; and though Geographers have placed it about fifteen leagues from Bagdad, yet what some have thought to be its ruins, others have conceived to have been the remains of buildings erected for a quite different purpose. See Bishop Newton's 10th Dis. 283-286. Prid. Con. p. i. b. 2. Univ. Hist. Octavo, Vol. iv.

31. And Darius the Mede accepted.-So Syr. and Ar. Five MSS.

accepted the kingdom, being about the age of sixty and two years.

and Heb. 240 make this verse to begin the next Chapter, and then it may be thus rendered—“ When Darius the Mede accepted the kingdom, being about the age of sixty-two years, It pleased, &c."

Josephus records this history in the following manner, Ant. x. 11, 4, “Darius, who with the assistance of his kinsman Cyrus destroyed the Babylonian empire, was at that time in his sixty-second year, was the son of Astyages, and was called by another name among the Greeks: he carried the prophet Daniel with him into Media, and made him one of his three Satraps, whom he appointed to preside over the whole kingdom." The word w Darius, seems of Persian origin; and though some have thought the termination to resemble the Greek Aapelos, yet Michaelis has obviated this objection, by shewing that Strabo has used the word Dariekes or Dariebes, for this word Darieves, and has considered it a barbarous (or Persic) word borrowed by the Greeks. See his Supplem. p. 464.

Jerom notes that for Darius LXX have Artaxerxes, which Secker says seems to deserve a good deal of notice, though little is taken of it. But Josephus calls the son of Xerxes by the name of Cyrus, whom he observes the Grecians call Artaxerxes; Ant. lib. xi. c. 6, so that the latter seems to have been a Grecian term corresponding to what was understood by Cyrus, or a general name given by the Greeks to the Kings of Persia.

CHAPTER VI.

1 Ir pleased Darius to appoint over the kingdom a

THIS Chapter contains the History of Daniel's Preferment under Darius, of the Envy which it excited in the principal Officers of the State, and their Conspiracy against him on that account. By their means he is cast into a Den of Lions, but miraculously preserved from Injury; and the punishment is retorted upon his accusers, who are torn to pieces, and the King is brought to the acknowledgment and praise of the true God.

1. It pleased Darius.-That is, Cyaxares, whose father is called Assuerus, in the book of Tobit, Chap. xiv. 15, as he is also by Daniel, Chap. ix. 1, meaning in both places Astyages, or the King of Media that concurred with the Assyrian monarch in the destruction of Nineveh. See Prelim. Dis. &c. Herodotus and Xenophon make mention of an ancient gold coin called Aapeikos or Daric, as is presumed by many writers, from this King; from the first Darius, according to Suidas, or one prior to Hystaspes. This coin seems to have been called by the like name after the captivity in Ezra ii. 69, and 1 Chron. xxix. 7. Sir Isaac Newton says he had seen one of them, and that it was stamped on one side with the effigies of an archer crowned with a spiked crown, with a bow in his left, and an arrow in his right hand, and clothed with a long robe, that it weighed two attic drams, and was of the value of the attic stater. Chron. of Ant. Kingd. p. 319.

The war with the Chaldeans, that ended in the destruction of Babylon, seems to have commenced originally on the part of the Medes, over whom the Babylonian queen Nitocris, accoding to Herodotus, had kept a jealous and watchful eye. Jeremiah, Chap. li. 11, 28, mentions the Kings of the Medes only as raised up against Babylon, and so Isa. Chap. xiii. 17, but elsewhere he joins the Elamites with them; and Thucydides, as has been before observed, generally calls the Persians Medes only. However, when Babylon was taken and subdued by the united powers of Media and Persia, Cyrus was pro

hundred and twenty princes, who should be over the

bably induced to set over it this King of the Medes, in order to make the union of the two nations more easy, and to prepare matters better for the full establishment of the Persian empire. Cyaxares, as is generally agreed, reigned not more than two years; and during that term being only a sort of Vice-roy, or at least dependent upon Cyrus, the whole period of nine years is ascribed by Ptolemy to Cyrus, and no notice taken of Darius at all. See Prelim. Dis. Some assert that Xenophon assigns only seven years for the reign of Cyrus over the whole empire, from what others think the mistake of a passage in the eighth book of the Cyrop. The passage is this, “ μada dŋ îρeσβυτης ων ο Κυρος αφικνειται εις Περσας το εβδομον επι της αυτου αρχης. Cyrus being now far advanced in years visits the Persians (according to Usher, Prideaux and Mr. Lowth) in the seventh year of his reign or empire; but Mr. Hutchinson has justly observed that the expression only means the seventh time since the commencement of his empire. And yet even in this sense, the argument will amount to the same, if we recollect that Cyrus, according to Xenophon, went to Babylon and spent a considerable time there once in every year, passing the seven winter months of the year in Babylon, three in the spring at Susa, and the two summer months at Ecbatane; so that the seventh time of his going thither after he was possessed of the empire must be the same as the seventh year of his reign.

The same Author, at p. 487, informs us, that after the return of Cyrus from the taking of Babylon he left Cyaxares the Mede, who had accompanied him to Media, in possession of the Babylonian government, and appointed him a house and a royal palace for his reception there, which he was to consider as his own, and retire to ws oɩkela, as his own domestic property; that Cyaxares in consequence of this sent him his daughter, whom Cyrus, after he had settled in Persia, with the approbation of his parents married, so that Darius became his father in law as well as his uncle, and the whole kingdom of Media, as he had no son, was given in dower with her; and after the marriage and the settlement of his affairs in Persia, which events neither Cambyses nor Cyaxares seems to have long survived, Cyrus departed with her to Babylon.

Now though several of these circumstances, or at least the time fixed for them, may be considered as fictions, yet from what has been already advanced in the Prelim. Dis. we must agree with those writers

2 whole kingdom: And over these, three presidents, of which Daniel was one, that the princes might give an account to them, and the king have no damage.

who admit the ground-plot or general plan of the Cyrop. to he founded on real facts. Nor does it seem improbable that Cyrus married the daughter of Cyaxares, and that the other embellishments were added by Xenophon: Unless perhaps, and which is as material to our present purpose, the kingdom of Media by a familiar prosopopoeia be all that is meant by the daughter, in allusion to the oriental manner, which this elegant Greek must have been well acquainted with. Thus the daughter of Zion and of Jerusalem, Isa. xxxvii. 22, means the inhabitants thereof, and the daughters of cities are the circumjacent towns and villages; and the reversion of the kingdom of Media, which was perhaps the dearest pledge of Cyaxares' regard, by a fair analogy, might be the whole that was here meant to be given up, as a compensation for the immediate possession of the territory of Babylon. But I offer this as a mere conjecture, which may tend to remove an objection which some have conceived against the Cyrop. from this marriage of Cyrus: Yet I need not be solicitous for the truth of this event, as it is sufficient for my chief purpose, that there was such a person as Cyaxares, born among the Medes, and who presided over Babylon.

This Darius seems to have followed the same plan of Government over the provinces, which Xenophon tells us Cyrus did over the conquered nations, Εδόκει αυτω σατραπας ηδη πεμπειν επι τα κατεστραμμενα eðvŋ. Cyr. 1. viii, see also Esth. i. 1, and Archbishop Usher thinks the plan was first instituted by Cyrus, and pursued by Darius at his suggestion. Annals, p. 82. After the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, and of Thrace and India by Darius Hystaspes, seven other provinces were added, so that in the Persian empire were 127 provinces at the time of Esther.

2.

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-— presidents.—Chald. D. Th. TAKTIKOUS. Aq. σVVEKTIKGUS. Targum uses the word for the Heb. w Officers or Curators. It seems to have been the same sort of office with that conferred on Joseph by Pharaoh, Gen. xli. 41. "See I have set thee over all the land of Egypt." Grotius thinks these Eparchs were like the Præfecti Prætorio in the latter part of the Roman empire.

-no damage.-Chald.

66

'might not suffer hurt or loss." The

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