of them with water: and, for thed better promoting of religion, he maintained skilful scribes to collate together and write out copies of the holy Scripture; and it is particularly mentioned, that the Proverbs of Solomon were thus collected together and wrote out by those men.

And in his time the Simeonites, being straitened in their habitations, much enlarged their borders toward the south for falling on the Amalekites, who dwelt in part of Mount Seir, and in the rich valley adjoining, they smote them, and utterly destroyed them, and dwelt in their rooms,

An. 698.

But it was the misfortune of this good king Hezekiah to be succeeded by a son who was the wickedest and worst of the whole race: for after him Manas. 1. reignedf Manasseh, who being a minor only twelve years old, at his coming to the crown, had the misfortune to fall into the hands of such of the nobility for his guardians and chief ministers, who, being ill affected to his father's reformation, took care to breed him up in the greatest aversion to it that they were able, corrupting his youth with the worst of principles, both as to religion and government; so that, when he grew up, he proved the most impious towards God, and most tyrannical and wicked towards his subjects, of any that had ever reigned, either in Jerusalem or Samaria, over the tribes of Israel; for he not only restored all the idolatry of Ahaz, but went much beyond him in every abomination, whereby the true worship of God might be suppressed, and his most holy name dishonoured in the land; for whereas Ahaz did only shut up the house of God, he converted it into a house of all manner of idolatrous profanation, setting up an image in the sanctuary, and erecting altars for Baalim, and all the host of heaven, in both its courts; and he also practised witchcrafts, and enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits, and made his children pass through the fire to Molech, and filled Judah and Jerusalem with his high places, idols, groves, and altars erected to false gods, and brought in all manner of other idolatrous profanations, whereby the d Prov. xxv, 1. e 1 Chron. iv, 39-43. f 2 Kings xxi. 2 Chron. xxxiii.

true religion might be most corrupted, and all manner of impiety be most promoted, in the kingdom: and, to all these ways of abomination, he made Judah and Jerusalem to conform, raising a terrible persecution against all that would not comply with him herein, whereby he filled the whole land with innocent blood, of which he did shed very much in the carrying on of these and his other wicked purposes. And when God sent his prophets to him, to tell him of these his iniquities, and to exhort him to depart from them, he treated them with contempt and outrage, and several of them he put to death; and, particularly, it is said, that Isaiah the prophet, on this account, suffered martyrdom under him, by being cruelly sawn asunder. This wash an old tradition among the Jews; and the holy apostle, St. Paul, in his epistle to the Hebrews (c. xi, 37,) having among the torments undergone by the prophets and martyrs of foregoing times, reckoned that of being sawn asunder, he i is generally thought in that place to have had respect hereto. By which horrid iniquities and abominations, God was so justly incensed against the land, that he declared hereon,j that he would stretch out over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and wipe Jerusalem clean of all its inhabitants, as a man wipeth a dish, and turneth it when empty upside down. Which, accordingly, was executed upon it, in the destruction of that city, and the desolation which was brought upon all Judah at the same time. And among all the iniquities that drew down these heavy judg ments upon that city and land, the sins of Manasseh are always reckoned as the most provoking cause; by which an estimate may be best made of the greatness of them.

In the fifth year of Manasseh diedm Apronadius, king of Babylon, and was succeeded by m Manas. 5. Regibilus, who reigned only one year. After

An. 694.

g Josephus Antiq. lib. 10, c. 4.

h Talmud Hierosol. in Sanhedrin, fol. 28, col. 3. Talm. Babylon. in Jevammoth, fol. 49. col. 2, et in Sanhedrin, fol. 103. col. 2. Shaleshelleth Hakkabbalah, fol. 19, col. 1. Yalcut Lib. Regum, fol. 38, col. 4.

i Vide Justin. Martyr. in Dialogo cum Tryphone.

am, c. 20 and 57. Epiphanium, et alios.
12 Kings xxiii, 26; and xxiv, 3. Jer. xv, 4.

Hieronymum in Esaij 2 Kings xxi, 13. m Canon Ptolemai.

him, Mesessimordacus had the kingdom, and held it four years.

An. 688.

In the eleventh year of Manasseh died Tirhakah, king of Egypt, after he had reigned there Manas.11. eighteen years, who was the last of the Ethiopian kings that reigned in that country. The Egyptians, after his death, not being able to agree about the succession, continued for two years together in a state of anarchy and great confusion, till? at length, twelve of the principal nobility conspiring together, seized the kingdom, and, dividing it among themselves into twelve parts, governed it by joint confederacy fifteen years.

An. 680.

The same year that this happened in Egypt, by the death of Tirhakah, the like happened in Babylon, by the death of Mesessimordacus. For, he leaving no son behind him to inherit the kingdom, an interregnum of anarchy and confusion followed there, for eight years together; of which Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, taking the advantage, seized BabyManas. 19. lon; and adding it to his former empire, thenceforth reigned over both for thirteen years. He is in the canon of Ptolemy, called AssarAdinus. And in the Scriptures he is spoken of as king of Babylon and Assyria jointly together. In Ezra he is called Asnappar, and hath there the honourable epithets of the great and noble, added to his name by the author of that book; which argues him to have been a prince of great excellency and worth in his time, and far exceeding all others, that had reigned before him in either of the kingdoms.

In the twenty-second year of Manasseh, Esarhaddon, after he had now entered on the fourth year of his reign in Babylon, and fully settled his authority

s He is said, as king of Assyria, to have brought a colony out of Babylon into Samaria, 2 Kings xvii, 24. Ezra iv, 9, 10, which he could not have done, if he had not been king of Babylon, as well as of Assyria, at that time. And in 2 Chron. xxiii, 11, he is said, as king of Assyria, to have taken Manasseh prisoner, and to have carried him to Babylon, which argues him, at that time, to have been king of Babylon also.

t Ezra iv, 10.

Manas. 22.

there, began to set his thoughts on the recov→ ery of what had been lost to the empire of An. 677. the Assyrians, in Syria and Palestine, on the destruction of his father's army in Judea, and on that doleful retreat, which thereon he was forced to make from thence; and, being encouraged to this undertaking by the great augmentation of strength which he had acquired, by adding Babylon and Chaldea to his former kingdom of Assyria, he prepared a great army, and marched into those parts, and again added them to the Assyrian empire. And then was accomplished the prophecy which was spoken by Isaiah, in the first year of Ahaz, against Samaria," that, within threescore and five years, Ephraim should be absolutely broken, so as from thenceforth to be no more a people. For this year, being exactly sixty-five years from the first of Ahaz, Esarhaddon, after he had settled all affairs in Syria, marched into the land of Israel, and there taking captive all those who were the remains of the former captivity (excepting only some few, who escaped his hands, and continued still in the land,) carried them away into Babylon and Assyria; and then, to prevent the land from becoming desolate, he brought others from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and Hamath, and Sepharvaim, to dwell in the cities of Samaria in their stead. And so the ten tribes of Israel, which had separated from the house of David, were brought to a full and utter destruction, and never after recovered themselves again. For those who were thus carried away, as well in this as in the former captivities (excepting only some few, who, joining themselves to the Jews in the land of their captivity, returned with them,) soon going into the usages and idolatry of the nations among whom they were planted, to which they were too much addicted while in their own land, after a while, became wholly absorbed and swallowed up in them; and thenceforth, utterly losing their name, their language, and their memorial, were never after any more spoken of. And whereas there is a sect of Samaritans still remaining in Samaria, Sichem, and other towns thereabout, even to

u Isa. vii, 8.

x 2 Kings xvii, 24. Ezra iv, 2, 10.

this day, who still have the law of Moses in a character peculiar to themselves, and in a dialect very little, if any thing at all, different from that of the Jews; yet these are not of the descendants of the Israelites, but of those nations which Esarhaddon brought to dwell in that country in their stead, after the others had been carried thence into captivity; and, for this reason, the Jews call them by no other name than that of Cuthites (the name of one of those nations whom Esarhaddon had planted there,) and have that utter hatred and aversion to them, that, reckoning them among the worst of heretics, they express on all occasions a greater detestation of them than they do even of the Christians themselves.

Esarhaddon, after he had thus possessed himself of the land of Israel, sent some of his princes, with part of his army, into Judea, to reduce that country also under his subjection; who having vanquished Manasseh iný battle, and taken him, hid in a thicket of thorns, brought him prisoner to Esarhaddon, who bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon; where, his chains and his prison having brought him to himself, and a due sense of his great sin, wherewith he had sinned against the Lord his God, he returned unto him with repentance and prayer, and in his affliction, greatly humbled himself before him; whereon, God being intreated of by him, he mollified the heart of the king of Babylon towards him, so that, on a treaty, he was again restored to his liberty, and returned to Jerusalem; and then, knowing the Lord to be God, he abolished all those idolatrous profanations, both out of the temple, and out of all other parts of the land, which he had in his wickedness introduced into them, and again restored in all things the reformation of king Hezekiah, his father, and walked according thereto all the remainder of his life, worshipping the Lord his God only, and none other. And all Judah conformed to him herein; so that he continued in prosperity after this to the end of his reign, which was the longest of any of the kings that had sat on the throne of David, either before or after him: for he reigned fully fifty-five y 2 Chron. xxxiii, 11. Joseph. Antiq. lib. 10, c. 4.