CHAP. VIII.

Zachariah is made king of Israel, after the throne had been vacant twenty-two years. He is murdered by Shallum, who usurps the throne. Shallum is put to death by Menahem, the general of the forces, who succeeds him in the government. Menahem, after reigning ten years, dies, and is succeeded by his son Pekahiah. This prince is murdered by Pekah, the general of his forces, who usurps the government, and after a reign of twenty years, is murdered by Hoshea, who succeeds him, and under whose government the Israelitish kingdom is destroyed by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. The story of Tobit and Tobias.

THE interregnum, or vacancy in the throne of Israel, which lasted upwards of twenty-two years, occasioned such a general confusion among the people, that at length they came to a resolution of placing Zachariah, the son of Jeroboam II. and the last of Jehu's line, upon the throne. This happened in the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah, king of Judah; but as he proved a wicked prince, and followed the steps of bis ancestors, he did not live long to enjoy the government: for, at the expiration of six months, he was murdered by Shallum, the son of Jabesh, who usurped the throne.

Shallum's government was much shorter than that of his predecessor, he being on the throne only one month. At the time of his murdering Zachariah, Menahem the general of the king's forces, was besieging Tirzah;† but as soon as he heard what had happened, he immediate

* Zachariah was the fourth king from Jehu, and the last of his race; in whom was fulfilled that gracious promise God was pleased to make to Jehu, as a reward for his courage and zeal in executing the judgment which God had commanded him to do on the house of Ahab, viz. that he and his family should sit on the throne of Israel unto the fourth generation, which was about 100 years, the last of the family being this king Zachariah, the son of Jeroboam II.

+ Tirzah was a long time the regal city of the kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam, who was the first king, though he dwelt for some time at Shechem, in his latter days at least resided here; as did all the kings of Israel till Omri, having reigned six years in Tirzah, built Samaria, and removed the royal seat thither, where it continued till a final period was put to the Israelitish kingdom,

ly raised the siege, and marching directly to Samaria, defeated and slew Shallum, after which, having great interest and authority not only with the army, but the heads of the people, he was placed on the throne.

Menahem, having thus secured possession of the government, returned with his army to Tirzah, in order to renew the siege, and reduce the inhabitants to subjection. Elated with his preferment, and naturally fired with ambition, he peremptorily demanded the gates of the city to be immediately thrown open, which orders not being obeyed, he took the place by storm; and having plundered it, marched to Tiphsah, laying waste the whole country between the two places. On his demanding the inhabitants of Tiphsah to open the gates of the city, they likewise refused, upon which, after making himself master of the place, he put all to the sword, without distinction either of age or sex; and, in short, such was his barbarity and cruelty, that even women with child did not escape his unbounded resentment.

For some time during the reign of this prince, the kingdom of Israel was torn with terrible convulsions; rapine, murder, and all manner of violence, especially superstition and idolatry, prevailing throughout the land; and though they were often admonished, reproved, and threatened by the prophets, yet they would not desist from their evil ways, but, on the contrary, bid defiance to every civil and moral obligation.

This perverseness and wickedness of the Israelites so highly offended God, that he was pleased to punish them by means of Pul, king of Assyria, who, taking advantage of the universal distractions among the people, marched with an army, and invaded the kingdom of Israel on that side of the river Jordan which lay nearest to Babylon. As soon as Menahem found himself thus powerfully attacked, he, by a present of a thousand talents of silver, (which he raised from the wealthiest of his subjects) prevailed with him not only to withdraw his forces, but likewise, before he left the kingdom, to recognize his title to the crown of Israel. This was one great reason why Menahem held the government in peace and quietness for the space of ten years, at the expiration of which, and in the fiftieth year of Uzziah, king of Judah, he paid the debt of nature, and was succeeded on the throne by his son Pekahiah.

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The reign of Pekahiah, however, was but very short, for after he had been on the throne about two years, Pekah, the general of his army, conspired against him, and having slain him in the tower of the royal palace, usurped the government.

Pekah sat on the throne of Israel twenty years, but his reign was attended with many difficulties and perplexities, and he was at length divested of his life in the same manner he had taken away that of his predecessor. TiglathPileser, the then king of Assyria, invaded his dominions several times, took many of his principal cities, ravaged the country, and carried away great numbers of his subjects captives. At length Hoshea, the son of Elah, taking advantage of Pekah's confusion and distress, found means to murder him, and afterwards obtained possession of the throne of Israel.*

It was not long before Hoshea found that his usurpation of the government was attended with many incumbrances; for he, imitating his wicked predecessors, and, together with the people, continuing in disobedience and rebellion against the Lord, and slighting the admonitions and threatenings of the prophets, they at length so highly provoked God, that he deserted them, and suffered the king of Assyria sorely to afflict them.

Shalmaneser, the then Assyrian monarch, (who succeeded his father Tiglath-Pileser, in the fourteenth year of Ahaz king of Judah) invaded the Israelitish dominions

* After Hoshea had murdered his predecessor Pekah, the elders of the land seem to have taken the government into their own hands, for he had not the possession of the kingdom till the latter end of the 12th year of Ahaz; i. e. nine years after he had committed the fact. He came to the crown it must be owned in a very wicked manner, and yet his character in scripture is not so vile as that of many of his predecessors; 2 Kings, xvii. 2. For whereas the kings of Israel had hitherto maintained guards upon the frontiers, to hinder their subjects from going to Jerusalem to worship, Hoshea took away these guards, and gave free liberty to all to go and pay their adoration where the law had directed; and therefore, when Hezekiah had invited all Israel to come to his passover, this prince permitted all that would to go, and when upon their return from that festival, they destroyed all the monuments of idolatry that were found in the king. dom of Samaria, instead of forbidding them, in all probability he gave his consent to it; because without some tacit encouragement at least, they durst not have ventured to do it.

with a very considerable army, and after ravaging several capital places, at length laid siege to Samaria, which having subdued, he made Hoshea promise to become his vassal, and to pay him an annual tribute so long as he remained on the throne of Israel.

*

Hoshea, for some time, seut his presents and his tribute money with very great punctuality; but at length, having entered into a confederacy with So, king of Egypt, he flattered himself with being able, by his assistance, to shake off the Assyrian yoke, and therefore withdrew his subjection, by refusing to pay the tribute, as he had been accustomed to do for more than seven years.

In consequence of this remissness, Shalmaneser, who was a stranger to the cause of it, marched with a very large army against Hoshea, and having subdued all the surrounding country, and amassed prodigious wealth,† he advanced to Samaria, and immediately laid siege to the place. Such was the strength of the fortifications, and such the resolution of Hoshea, that the inhabitants held out more than three years, but at length were compelled to surrender, which was in the ninth and last year of Hoshea's reign.

Shalmaneser, having made himself complete master of Samaria, punished Hoshea with great severity, by ordering him to be immediately put in chains, conducted to prison, and there kept in close confinement during the remainder of his life. The inhabitants not only of Samaria, but also of the principal places in the Israelitish dominions, he made captives, carrying them away, and placing them in the northern parts of Assyria, and in the cities of the

This So, with whom Hoshea entered into confederacy, is, in profane authors, called Sabacon, that famous Ethiopian mentioned by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, who, in the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, invaded Egypt, and having taken Boccharis, the king thereof, prisoner, had him, in great cruelty, burnt alive, and then seized on his kingdom.

↑ Among other rich things which Shalmaneser took and carried away in this expedition, was the golden calf which Jeroboam had set up at Bethel, and which, ever since his time, had been worshipped by the ten tribes that had revolted with him from the house of David, as the other golden calf, which he set up at the same time at Dan, had been taken from thence about ten years before by Tiglath-Pileser, when he invaded Galilee, the province wherein that city stood.

Medes. Such was the wretched fate of a people, who disdained subjection to the laws, and despised the admonitions of the prophets, who repeatedly forewarned them that a continued course of impiety would certainly end in their destruction.

In order to supply the place of the Israelites in the land of Samaria, Shalmaneser sent several colonies of his own subjects from Babylon and other places, to inhabit the principal parts of the country. But these being too few for the purpose, and withal a very wicked and idolatrous people, the Divine Providence permitted lions, and other wild beasts, to multiply upon them to such a degree, that they were forced to make a representation thereof to the Assyrian court, which they did in words to this effect: "That, being ignorant of the manner wherein they were "to worship the God of the country, they supposed that "this affliction was sent upon them; and, therefore, they "humbly prayed, that some priests of the Jewish nation "might be sent to instruct them in that particular." This request was immediately complied with; but as these colonies consisted of a mixture of different nations and provinces, they joined the worship of the true God, with that of the several idols of the countries from whence they came, so that the whole was a medley of different religions, some of which, as practised by the colonists, were of the most strange and unaccountable nature.

Such was the end of the Israelitish kingdom, after it had subsisted above two hundred and fifty-six years; and such was the beginning of that mixture of people, who afterwards went under the name of Samaritans.

Among the captive Israelites who were carried away by Shalmaneser, was one Tobit,* a man of the tribe and city

* Though the Book of Tobit, from whence this story is taken, was not admitted by the Jews among their canonical books of scripture, nor received as canonical till the Council of Trent passed an order for that purpose, yet it has been allowed, not only by the Jews, but likewise the generality of Christian Fathers, to be a true history of this particular family, an admirable example of charity and beneficence, and an excellent pattern of paternal care and filial obedience. The book itself is supposed to have been written, the former part by Tobit himself, and the latter by his son; at least it is thought that they left behind them memoirs of their family, and such materials, as a later author, who lived very likely either in, or after the captivity,