are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

16

Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.

17 In the nine and thirtieth year of Azariah king of Judah began Menahem the son of Gadi to reign over Israel, and reigned ten years in Samaria.

18 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

19¶ And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand.

20 And Menahem 'exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land.

21 And the rest of the acts of Menahem, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

22 And Menahem slept with his fathers; and Pekahiah his son reigned in his stead.

23 In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned two years.

24 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

25 But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room.

26 And the rest of the acts of Pekahiah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

41 Chron. 5. 26.

27 In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned twenty years.

28 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

29 In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.

30 And Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.

31 And the rest of the acts of Pekah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

32 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel began "Jotham the son of Uzziah king of Judah to reign.

33 Five and twenty years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok.

34 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD: he did according to all that his father Uzziah had done.

35 Howbeit the high places were not removed the people sacrificed and burned incense still in the high places. He built the higher gate of the house of the LORD.

36 Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

37 In those days the LORD began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah.

38 And Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father: and Ahaz his son reigned in his stead.

ful state. This is proved by the concurrent testimony of Herodotus, Appian, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whose united evidence has been ably analysed by Dr. Hales: so that the accounts of Ctesias, who places the beginning of this great king's reign B.C. 2127, that is, prior to the birth of Abraham, evidently exemplifies the ingenious process by which nations contrived to assign a preposterous antiquity to their greatness. It is clear, by this account, that Ninus II., the true founder of the Assyrian empire, is confounded with that mighty hunter' Nimrod, or Ninus I.-the victories and acts of the latter being assigned with much exaggeration to the former, while, to countenance the story, an imaginary dynasty of twenty-four kings is made to precede the real founder of the empire. If so mighty an empire had existed from the time of Abraham, it is incredible that no notice of it should have been found in all the Scripture. Indeed, the dynasty commencing with Ninus II. is not mentioned in the holy books till the mission of Jonah; when, however, it is clear that Nineveh, that eminently great city,' was the capital of an important empire, which had not, however, until the period of the present text, extended its limits west of the Euphrates, and thereby come into offensive contact with the Hebrew kingdoms. It is also only about this time that we begin to trace, with any distinctness, the historical notices of Assyria which are to be found in the Greck authors. [APPENDIX, No. 44.] The Scripture dynasty of Assyrian kings begins with that unnamed 'king of Nineveh' who repented at the prophecy of Jonah. Dr. Hales thinks it probable that Pul was his son, and apparently the second Belus of the Greek historians, who built the temple of that name at Babylon, which was a chief city of the Assyrian empire. He is the first Assyrian sovereign whom we find west of the Euphrates, and this circumstance it was, probably, that drew the attention of the Greeks towards him and his empire. To avert the immediate danger of this invasion cost the king of Israel 375,000l. of our money, raised by a tax of nearly six guineas each upon his more wealthy subjects.

29. Tiglath-pileser.-This conqueror seems to have been the son of Pul. It is the probable conjecture of Sir Isaac Newton (admitted by Hales), that at Pul's death his dominions were divided between his two sons; when the sovereignty of Assyria was given to the elder, Tiglath

pileser; and the prefecture of Babylon to the younger, Nabonassar, from the date of whose reign or government the celebrated era of that name took its rise, B.C. 747. The cause of this incursion is given in the next chapter. The king of Judah, being close pressed by the kings of Israel and Syria, bribed the Assyrian, with the spoils of the temple and the promise of vassalage, to come to his assistance. Tiglath-pileser willingly availed himself of the opportunity of extending his own power westward: he slew the king of Syria, and took Damascus, transporting its inhabitants to Kir (Kurdistan), or Assyria Proper, and then proceeded to deal out the same bitter portion to Israel. The transJordanic tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half-Manasseh, he removed to Media, and also the other half of Manasseh that was settled in Galilee. This was the first captivity: but some understand that the trans-Jordanic tribes were removed by Pul, and the inhabitants of Galilee only by his son: (compare this verse with 1 Chron. v. 26.) The king of Judah had small cause to congratulate himself on this result, for, as Prideaux remarks, Instead of two petty princes, whom he had afore for his neighbours, and with either of which he was well able to cope, he had now this mighty king for his neighbour, against whom no power of the land was sufficient to make any resistance, and the ill effect whereof both Israel and Judah did afterwards sufficiently feel.' The name of Tiglath-pileser has had various interpretations, some of them very absurd. Might not the distinctive part of it- Tiglath,' be taken from the river Tigris, on which his capital stood, and which, to this day, bears the name of Diglath? D and T are letters continually changed for each other. The name might then mean 'great lord of the Tigris.' The title lord of the river' (Tigris) is now borne by an Arab sheikh who received it from the pasha of Bagdad. [APPENDIX, No. 45.]

Janoah.'-A place of this name is mentioned in Josh. xvi. 6, as in the tribe of Ephraim, and which Jerome describes as being in his time a village in Acrabatene, twelve miles to the east of Neapolis or Shechem. But Bonfrere thinks, not without reason, that the present text requires the Janoah it mentions to be a distinct place in the tribe of Naphtali, in which all the other places here named were situated.

CHAPTER XVI.

1 Ahaz's wicked reign. 5 Ahaz, assailed by Rezin and Pekah, hireth Tiglath-pileser against them. 10 Ahaz, sending a pattern of an altar from Damascus to Urijah, diverteth the brasen altar to his own devotion. 17 He spoileth the temple. 19 Hezekiah succeedeth him.

IN 'the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.

2 Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD his God, like David his father.

3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abomination of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.

4 And he sacrificed and burnt incense in

1 2 Chron. 28. i.

the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.

5 Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him.

6 At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day.

7 So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.

8 And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria.

9 And the king of Assyria hearkened unto

2 Isa. 7. 1.

him for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.

10 And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus: and king Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof.

11 And Urijah the priest built an altar according to all that king Ahaz had sent from Damascus so Urijah the priest made it against king Ahaz came from Damascus.

12 And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar: and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon.

13 And he burnt his burnt offering and his meat offering, and poured his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of 'his peace offerings, upon the altar.

14 And he brought also the brasen altar, which was before the LORD, from the forefront of the house, from between the altar and the house of the LORD, and put it on the north side of the altar.

15 And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the

3 Heb. Dammesek.

priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat offering, and the king's burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice and the brasen altar shall be for me to enquire by.

16 Thus did Urijah the priest, according to all that king Ahaz commanded.

17

And king Ahaz cut off the borders of the bases, and removed the laver from off them; and took down the sea from off the brasen oxen that were under it, and put it upon a pavement of stones.

18 And the covert for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king's entry without, turned he from the house of the LORD for the king of Assyria.

19 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

20 And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.

4 Heb. which were his.

6

Verse 10. The fashion of the altar.'-The altars of the idolaters are frequently alluded to in Scripture; and the Hebrews are here and elsewhere severely rebuked for erecting similar altars. Doubtless the Divine indignation is to be referred primarily to the idolatrous worship to which these borrowed altars were often consecrated; but it is also to be remembered that the altars were in themselves unlawful, the materials, the situation, and even the form of the Lord's own altar having been specially defined, and all others being interdicted; and hence this new fashioned altar, which Ahaz ventured to introduce into the very temple itself, with the design that it should supersede the ancient altar, was deeply objectionable. We have thought it might form an instructive illustration to assemble in one engraving representations of the most prevalent forms which the altars bore among different ancient nations the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans-as furnishing probable examples of those which were at different times adopted by the Jews.

Altars were doubtless the first constructions which men devoted to the service of God. They found it inconvenient to lay their offerings upon the ground, and at first therefore sought natural heaps or elevations for the purpose, and in mountainous countries the tops of the hills were favourite situations. But in plain countries, where such elevations could not easily be found, it was obvious to form them by art. The altars were at first simple heaps of unhewn stones or earth. But by degrees, when men became idolaters, and associated the power and presence of the object worshipped with the altar at which it was honoured, this patriarchal simplicity was relinquished. To this however Moses restricted the Israelites (Exod. xx. 24, and the note); and his injunction sufficiently intimates that the change had already taken place. Great diversity then arose in the materials, forms, and ornaments of altars. Every nation seems to have had a great variety of altars, although in each one general form appears to have been more common than any other, even when the details differed greatly. This was not so much owing to difference of taste as to the

plurality of idols; some forms, ornaments, and materials being considered more proper to particular gods. Hence, even among the heathen, some altars remained of the most simple character. We are told, for instance, that the altar of Jupiter Olympius was nothing but a heap of ashes. There was scarcely any practicable material of which altars were not made. Some were hewn from single large blocks of stone, others were formed of squared stones, and many of precious marbles; some were of brick, others of metal-brass, and even gold-being probably overlaid with the metal, like the Hebrew brazen altar and the golden altar of incense: others again are said to have been of wood, even in Greece; but these were not common, neither do those appear to have been so which are described as having been built with the horns of animals curiously interlaced. Moses mentions the horus of the altars,' but in a different sense, meaning only the salient angles of its platform. The shapes of altars were almost infinitely varied, as well as their dimensions; but the leading forms and proportions will be seen by the figures in our engraving. We may observe however that, to the best of our recollection, no native Oriental antiquities exhibit the round form which appears in one of our Grecian specimens, although they were probably brought into use by the Greeks of Asia. Altars were generally about three feet high; but some were lower, and some higher, those dedicated to the celestial gods being the highest. The fire altars of Persia were not intended for sacrifice, but for burning sacred fire: hence, perhaps, as the priests had little service to perform at them, they were often made of a height and size which would not have been convenient in an altar for sacrifice. Those grand altars which our engraving exhibits are cut out of the solid substance of a projecting mass of rock, and stand upon a rocky platform twelve or fourteen feet above the level ground. They grow narrow from the base upward, as do many of the most ancient altars; so that, although the base is a square of four feet six inches, the top is ten inches less. Some ancient altars were solid, others were hollow; and most of them had at the top an

of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

7 For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods,

8 And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.

9 And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.

10 And they set them up 'images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree :

11 And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger: 12 For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, 'Ye shall not do this thing. 13 Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, 'by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, "Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.

14 Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God.

15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.

16 And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and 'made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

17 And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

4 Heb. statues.

18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

19 Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made.

20 And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.

21 For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin.

22 For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them;

23 Until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.

24 ¶ And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.

25 And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them.

26 Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.

27 Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

28 Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.

29 Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.

30 And the men of Babylon made Succoth

7 Jer. 18. 11, and 25. 5, and 35. 15.

5 Deut, 4. 19.

8 Deut. 31. 27.