On the occasion of this last deportation, the book of Kings specifies Halah, Habor, the river Gozan, and the cities of Media, as the localities to which the exiles were consigned. The two first of these names indicate places north of Nineveh, and south of the lake of Van; 2 the river Gozan, still known by the same name Ozen, rises south of the lake of Ourmia, and forms approximately the northern boundary of Media, which is mentioned with it.3 The names of the cities of Media are not stated. One of them was the Rages (afterwards shortened to Rai) known from the book of Tobit, the ruins of which are shown not far from the present royal Persian city of Teheran; one of the cities north of Nineveh was Elkosh, the city, according to all reliable traces, in which the prophet Nahum lived and wrote. But, speaking generally, it is a legitimate assumption that the localities mentioned in the book of Kings are only those to which the stream of compulsory emigration was directed in the greatest strength; numbers may have been banished to entirely different districts of the Assyrian empire, at that time so extensive, for policy would urge the greatest possible separation of the exiles. Thus we may admit, with high probability, that a residence was assigned to many of the exiles in Hamath.5 The earlier exiles of Tiglath-Pileser's time

4

1 2 Kings xvii. 6, xviii. 11. The Chronicler, indeed, 1 Chron. v. 26, gives Halah and Habor and Hara and the river Gozan as the places (not exactly defined in 2 Kings xv. 29) to which the exiles of the first captivity were consigned; but this statement is, no doubt, drawn from no other source than 2 Kings xvii. 6; for Hara, i.e. mountain-chain, is only the Aramean name for Media, as we may conclude from the corresponding Arabic name el-Jibâl.

2 We cannot well suppose the reference to be to the greater and better-known river Chaboras which flows into the Euphrates at Circesium, since it is preceded by Halah, and this last is certainly identical with the ancient Calah, Gen. x. 11, and the district Calachênê of Ptolem. Geogr. vi. 1, Strabo, Geogr. xi. 4, 8, 14. 12, xvi. 1. 1; although the Jews of the Middle Ages (cf. Fürst's Qaräer, i. p. 68 sq., 103 sq.) and Assemâni Bibl. Or. iii. 2, p. 731, make it identical with the city of Holvân lying further south (cf., also, Maqrîzî in Sacy's Chrest. Ar. ed. 2, i. p. 110 and Masson in the Lond. As. Journ. 1850, p. 104). We must, therefore, suppose the Habor to be the smaller river of that name, which flows from the east, and falls into the Tigris north of Nineveh. The course of this river is best seen in the map in Grant's Nestorians;

cf., also, Ainsworth's Trav. ii. p. 261 sq., 339 sq., Badger's Nestorians, i. p. 210. The whole district might then be named after this river.

3 If this river, which is the boundary of Media, is to be understood here, we can also see why the and is omitted before it in this connexion; the two first names, like the two last, are then closely connected together. The river Gozan, therefore, flowed past the site, in ancient times, of a city named гavÇavía, Ptolem. Geogr. vi. 2; and the name is probably not of Turkish origin (see Rawlinson in the Journ. Geogr. Soc. x. p. 54 sqq.; cf. Azon, Hazem, p. 74). The city of this name, however, referred to in 2 Kings xix. 12, must be looked for, on account of the other cities mentioned in conjunction with it, in Mesopotamia (p. 150).-The arbitrariness of the attempts of the later Jews to rediscover all these places in the more distant east, may be seen, for example, from the passage adduced above from Maqrîzî and from Tanchûm on 2 Kings xvii. 6.

That Nahum lived here is shown in the Propheten des A. B. ii. p. 2 sq.

5 When Hamath is mentioned in Is. xi. 11 sq. among the districts in which the Israelites were at that time scattered, it is of course understood that they could only

were probably, for the most part, scattered over Babylon and Elam, which lay still further to the east.' When it is further borne in mind that numbers preferred voluntary flight into the countries of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Europe,2 and that others, as prisoners of war, were sold in great numbers into every country, it becomes clear how widely the descendants of Israel must even then have been dispersed.

III. THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH, ITS DELIVERANCE AND INCREASED VIGOUR: ISAIAH AND HEZEKIAH.

4

While every movement of which the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was either the source or the object during the last half-century of its existence only contributed the more inevitably to hasten its ruin, Judah, which was not threatened by the Assyrian power even at a distance, succeeded in maintaining for a considerable period that far greater relative prosperity which has been already described.3 Uzziah, who could hardly have lived till the reign of Pekah in the sister kingdom, was succeeded by his brave son Jotham, who entirely resembled him in disposition, and carried on the government on precisely the same principles. After Uzziah's death, it is true, the Ammonite prince wished to make himself independent of Judah; but he was conquered by Jotham, and compelled to pay a yearly tribute of one hundred talents of silver, ten thousand measures of wheat, and the same quantity of barley.5 Commerce continued to prosper as in the preceding reign. The revenues which poured from all sides into the treasury of Jotham as into Uzziah's, he applied to a great extent to useful public works: he built the upper, i.e. the northern gate of the temple, as well as the citywall on the south-east; on the barren plateaus of the mountains in the south of Judah he founded new cities, the land round which was taken into cultivation; and in the forests (probably on the other side of the Jordan especially) he erected

have gone into any of the countries which were then possessed by the Assyrians (of which Hamath was one), on compulsion. Nor can it be urged that Hamath was at all too near for inhabitants of Samaria to be banished thither, because afterwards in the time of Esarhaddon inhabitants of Hamath were transplanted the reverse way to Samaria, 2 Kings xvii. 24-30.

This follows from Is. xi. 11.

2 The islands of the sea,' Is. xi. 11; comp. with Jonah i. 3, Mic. vii. 12.

castles and towers for the observation of the enemy.' But the constant increase of the power and security of the realm, and the profusion of an age rendered prosperous by the development of arts and distant commerce, were accompanied by an equally vigorous growth of other things; the craving for enjoyment and luxury among the people, and especially among the women of the capital; the foolish predilection for foreign manners and foreign superstitions of every kind; and a wantonness of life from which many even of the judges were not altogether free, and under which the defenceless inhabitants had to suffer with increasing severity; all of which Isaiah, the great prophet of the age, who lived in Jerusalem, recognised and depicted in the sharpest outlines. In the last years of his reign, Jotham had also to sustain the attacks of the allied kings of Damascus and Samaria; while on the north, the Assyrian power became more and more threatening to the independence and free development of all petty states. But the Assyrians themselves seemed to have entertained a certain dread of the power which, under Uzziah's long reign, had become so prosperous and strong; and they kept out of the circle of its movements and wars; while they had for a long time interfered in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Meanwhile, after a reign of sixteen years, Jotham died in the forty-second year of his age.

2

3

1. His death proved the commencement of a severe and tedious trial of the kingdom, which had for seventy years been so prosperous, and yet was suffering from the almost undisturbed progress of numerous internal evils. The cure of these evils, which became a more and more pressing necessity, and the increasing difficulty of the foreign relations of the kingdom, demanded a ruler of great energy and wisdom; but in Ahaz, the son of the preceding king, who was only five-and-twenty,5 the throne was occupied by a man whose weakness of character and foolish humours would have been quite sufficient, in the sixteen years of his reign, to put the whole kingdom out of

12 Kings xv. 35, and much more fully, 2 Chron. xxvii. 3 sq.

2 In a work published at the beginning of the reign of Ahaz, of which there have been still preserved Is. ii.-v., ix. 7-x. 4; cc. vi.-ix. 6, xvii. 1-11, were written later: cf. the Propheten des A. B. i. and also the Jahrbb. der Bibl. Wiss. vii. p. 30 sqq. 3 P. 158.

It may be seen how Isaiah, v. 26-30, first points to them from a distance.

5 In 2 Kings xvi. 2, it is true, the num

ber twenty is found, but in 2 Chron. xxviii. 1, the LXX Cod. Vat., the Peshito, and one Hebrew MS., at any rate, have the number twenty-five; and, in fact, the former number is scarcely conceivable, since Ahaz must then, according to 2 Kings xviii. 2 comp. with xvi. 2, have begotten his son Hezekiah in his eleventh year; which, though not in itself quite impossible, yet certainly never occurred in the case of any king's son.

joint, had there not been at the same time better forces at work to preserve it against his misguided designs. The circumstances of the state prevented any power but the prophetic from being strong enough to counterbalance the power of the crown; fortunately, however, there was then alive, in the person of Isaiah, the greatest prophet who ever appeared in ancient Jerusalem. In him the spiritualised prophetism, peculiar to this age, and especially to the kingdom of Judah, assumed its most pure and perfect form, so far as regards the power of language of equal force and beauty, the strength of its influence, and its outward success. His ministry is not free from the ancient vehemence and the inflexible pretension originally inherent in all prophetic activity; but with it the spirit is struggling to make clear the truth in its purity and freedom. His utterance alights with equal severity on the perverseness of men of all sorts, the king and the chief officers of state as well as the people, false prophets and accommodating priests; but he has no desire to destroy the human monarchy, or the house of David, even where it grievously errs; it is only on the certain approach of the consummation of everything human in the glorified kingdom of God and in the true king that his inspired glance is directed, it is this alone which lives hidden in his own heart: and when he turns from its bright picture and is obliged to discern and to proclaim that no existing kingdoms, neither Assyria nor Judah, can exist before it, he yet acts on every present opportunity as though at any rate the eternal law and the impulse of this coming consummation must even then prevail to change everything for good. It was in this spirit that the greatest of the great prophets of the Old Testament had laboured since the last year of king Uzziah; and now, impelled by the necessities of his cause, he found himself opposed in Ahaz to a prince whose whole nature was fundamentally different from his own.

There is no question that Ahaz, immediately on his accession, allowed the heathen party to take the helm of affairs, because his own natural disposition drew him in that direction, and perhaps because, in the troubled times which were expected, the most efficient support was looked for from that quarter. To it belonged at that time most of the members of the house of David and of the court; towards it was turned the general inclination of the people who, for seventy years, had been growing only too luxurious and pleasure-loving; and it was further

1 Cf. the address in Is. vii. 13; cf., also, Mic. vi. 16.

strengthened by foreign heathens, who were summoned into the country to take charge of high offices.1

mon.

3

The whole age favoured the intrusion of new knowledge, arts, and religions from the East; for which the Assyrian arms had long contributed to pave the way. A new era was, in this respect, rapidly coming on, when it would be said that it was only in earlier times that foreigners had not found an entrance into the country and brought with them totally new manners and ideas. The fifth narrator of the primitive history glances in his work at the older history of the famous eastern countries of his day, Assyria and Babylonia, in a manner wholly unknown to earlier works of the same kind; although the description of Paradise, containing as it does elements which, while mingled with primitive traditions of Canaan and remoulded by the genuine spirit of Mosaism, cannot conceal their origin from the more distant east, became possible in the later years of SoloThe sundial on the palace at Jerusalem which Ahaz erected, appears to have come from Babylon. It was certainly from Nineveh that he derived the idea of keeping the sacred horses of the sun, with splendid chariots, which he placed in the outer court of the temple, not far from its western entrance, and which seem, as in Persia, to have served as a sort of royal oracle." From Babylon, the ancient home of astronomy and astrology, came without doubt the worship of the whole host of heaven,' which was elaborately arranged on the flat roofs, and for which Ahaz erected little altars on the roof of the temple in a structure known as the upper house of Ahaz;" and the signs of the zodiac are now for the first time mentioned.-Moreover, every other sort of heathen superstition, even necromancy and the awful sacrifices of Moloch, were now freely tolerated; the king himself displayed a preference for such miserable consultations of the dead, and sacrificed one of his own sons to Moloch."

8

For instance, Shebna, the chief minister, who was denounced by Isaiah, xxii. 1525. In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign he was at least (Is. xxxvi. 3 sqq.) degraded to the post of second minister, and appears from Is. xxxvii. 2 to have seriously amended his ways. Cf. ii. 6, viii. 19.

2 As the poet of the book of Job makes Eliphaz say, Job xv. 19; in fact, similar things had already taken place in much earlier times.

Gen. x. 8-12, xi. 1-9; cf. ix. 20-27, Num. xxiv. 22-24, and also Gen. ii. 10-14. 4 Vol. iii. p. 276 sq.

109.

Is. xxxviii. 8, comp. with Herodot. ii.

• 2 Kings xxiii. 11, where n is to be

5

read; cf. Tac. Ann. xii. 13, and on the Persian chariots of the sun, Abdias' Hist. Apost. vi. 21, ix. 14. The kings of Judah there alluded to without further description were certainly Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon. Cf. Raoul-Rochette in the Paris Mémoires de l'Acad. xviii. 2, pp. 139 sqq.

The roof mentioned 2 Kings xxiii. 12 can only be, by the context, that of the temple. On the importance of the mention of the Zodiac, see the Zeitschr. für das Morgenl. iii. pp. 369 sqq., 418; to this may be added the essays of Max Müller and Alb. Weber about it.

This follows from Is. viii. 19 sq. 92 Kings xvi. 3; on the other hand, the description in ver. + is due solely to