from their more threatening enemies of Nineveh they were miraculously delivered. When Sennacherib was already encamped against Jerusalem, "the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five thousand." The promise of present preservation, and the assurance that the nation most dreaded was not appointed to injure them, gave peace and tranquillity during the remnant of Hezekiah's days; and at this time God bestowed upon His people a still further blessing in those predictions of the final glories of Christ's kingdom, which form the last half of Isaiah's prophecy. The first half of this book refers, for the most part, to God's judgments on the Jews and the surrounding nations; the last part of it, to their deliverance from captivity, and to the coming of the Saviour, which lay beyond. And these predictions it pleased God to give in a tranquil period of His Church's history, as though their character of thanksgiving and confidence was to agree with the peaceful and prosperous state of the period when they were given. Their very style and language is calm, easy, and flowing, and differs much from the abrupt and passionate sentences in which God's judgments upon His sinful people are pre dicted. It was not until four generations after Hezekiah, that Isaiah's predictions concerning Babylon were accomplished. Manasseh, Hezekiah's son, had especially provoked God's wrath against His people, by filling Jerusalem with the innocent blood of His servants.5 No national sin so much excited God's anger as this persecution of His Church. In it Isaiah is supposed to have perished, -sawn asunder by Manasseh's order. This was the age of the chief 3 Isaiah xxxvii. 36. 5 2 Kings xxiv. 4. 4 B.C. 710. B.C. 604. THE CHALDEES. 51 prophets. Jeremiah's predictions were uttered in the time of Josiah, Manasseh's grandson, and of Josiah's sons. In the latter part of this time, Ezekiel prophesied in Chaldea, and Daniel in Babylon. Hosea and Micah had lived in the days of Hezekiah; Amos shortly before. Thus was the Jewish Church prepared for that great judgment which was shortly to fall upon it. The CAPTIVITY,-delayed for a time in consequence of Josiah's reformation,-came shortly afterwards, in the days of Zedekiah, Josiah's son. Babylon had now attained that dangerous greatness which Isaiah had predicted, when the ambassadors of its king Merodach Baladan had visited Hezekiah. The independence of Babylon had at that time been short; for when Merodach Baladan had reigned for half a year, Sennacherib conquered him, and established his son Esarhaddon upon the throne. But in the interval which had since elapsed a new power had grown up in Asia.7 The Chaldæans, a people of Japhetic race, whose native land was the mountainous region to the north of Assyria, where they were still found in the time of Cyrus, whether introduced as mercenaries by their less hardy neighbours, or by whatever means they were settled in the neighbourhood of Babylon, had now become its masters. "This people was not," says the prophet,10 7 Vide the Armenian edition of Eusebius's Chronicon, in Gesenius on Is. xxxix. 1. 8 Gesenius, ubi sup. p. 748. The writer has been censured for quoting Gesenius's Commentary, without cautioning his readers against the sophistical and heartless neology which pervades it. As that work, however, is not translated, he thought it little likely to be read except by professed students; and to such persons the best antidote to this specious and increasing evil of the times is to be found, not in ignorance of its novelties, but in an acquaintance with those ancient principles of the Anglican Church, which supply its sole correction. 9 Cyrop. iii. 2, § 7, 12. 10 Is. xxiii. 13. "till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness." But "when the Assyrian power was beginning to sink, the Chaldæans in Babylon united themselves to other tribes which were preparing to revolt, and, under the guidance of their conquering chief Nebuchadnezzar, played the part of their former lords." Babylon, therefore, was the great seat of their strength, "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency ;"12 and it was especially under "Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean "13 that it became "the glory of kingdoms," " the golden city." "11 "14 How it came to this measure of greatness, and what was the peculiar feature which led Daniel afterwards to describe it as a "head of gold," shall now be mentioned. Till the improvements in navigation opened a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, the Persian Gulf was the great channel through which all traffic from the East flowed into the western world. It has been mentioned that the merchants of Dedanim carried their wares across Arabia to Tyre. But Babylon lay in the most favourable position to engross this traffic; ships could sail to her up the Euphrates from the Indian Sea; and hence, at an early period, she_had become the centre of trade in that part of the East. To this day Bagdad and the adjoining cities upon the Euphrates present a singular contrast in wealth and manners to the wild mountains of Persia on the south-east of them. 66 Though but a shadow of what it was, Bagdad is still the caravansera of Asia.”15 And in ancient times Babylon was "a land of traffic, a city of merchants." 16 Hence Isaiah speaks of 11 Gesenius on Is. xxiii. 13, p. 747. 14 Is. xiv. 4. 13 Ezra v. 12. 15 Porter; quoted by Heeren, Ideen, i. § 2, p. 200. 16 Ezek. xvii. 4. B.C. 604. COMMERCE OF BABYLON. 53 "the Chaldæans, whose cry is in the ships;" and Eschylus tells of "the mingled crowd sent forth by the wealthy Babylon, archers and managers of vessels."17 Herodotus, an eye-witness of the magnificence of Babylon, gives us some account of the trade with which its river supplied it. He speaks especially of that with Armenia and Mesopotamia, whence vast quantities of the necessaries of life were brought in large coracles, some of them five thousand talents in burden, formed of ribs of wood overlaid with a covering of hides.18 When these vessels arrived at Babylon their frameworks were broken up and sold, while the hides were carried home upon the back of an ass, which was brought down in the vessel. In this manner the city was supported. But its wealth was derived from vessels which came to it immediately from the sea, or landed their cargoes at Gerra, its colony on the Persian Gulf.19 This traffic had probably diminished in the time of Herodotus, since it was discouraged by the Persian conquerors of Babylon. But it was thus that the Babylonians were supplied with cotton, which they wove into those garments of which we hear as early as the days of Joshua.20 From the Persian Gulf, also, they received pearls, bamboos, and gems, which they were celebrated for their skill in cutting.21 Cinnamon they imported from the Isle of Ceylon"the sweet cane," which came, as Jeremiah tells “ from a far country.' us, 22. But besides this seafaring activity, which had 17 Persæ, 52. 18 Herod. i. 194. 19 Heeren, i. § 2, p. 232. 20 Josh. vii. 21; Herod. i. 195. 21 Meeren, i. § 2, p. 246; and Herod. i. 195. 22 Jer. vi. 20. its common effect in corrupting their manners, and bringing them, as Herodotus assures us,23 to an unusual measure of immodesty, Babylon was likewise the great depôt for trade with the further part of India, with which the ancients communicated by land. Thus from that portion of India, which was afterwards part of the Persian empire, near the sources of the Indus, they received cochineal.24 There was considerable traffic with Lesser Thibet, along a road which, passing from Assyria through the Caspian Straits, a celebrated pass near the south of the Caspian Sea, afterwards led on to Bactria and Aria. These countries bordered on the tribes which are called by Herodotus the northern Indians, of whom he speaks as supplying vast quantities of gold-dust, which they procured from ant-hills in the great desert of Kobi.25 His account evidently shews that great riches were procured from that quarter; and also that those from whom he derived his information were unwilling to reveal the method in which it was procured. But Ctesias tells us, that when the Indians went on the expeditions in which they procured gold, it was in large bodies; and that their journey lasted for three or four years.26 So that we seem to discover that the trade by which Babylon was enriched was carried on through the medium of caravans with the most distant parts of the East. At the time of its great prosperity, and either by Nebuchadnezzar or his queen, Babylon was adorned with public works of the most gigantic kind. The city was built in a vast square on each side of the river Euphrates; its whole circuit being |