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* Px 30. IL
ver. 19; Ne. & 11

A vers. 13, 14; eh. 7. 5. etc.; a 3, etc.

i ch. 7. 10: PK 7. 16: 109. 17, 18; 141. 18.

their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting 23 and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor. And ❘ the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written unto 24 them; because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, 5 ch. 36,7. 25 the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them; but when Esther came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his sons 26 should be hanged on the gallows. Wherefore they called these days Purim 3 after the name of Pur [i. e. lot]. Therefore for all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and which had come unto 27 them, the Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as 'joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed 28 time every year; and that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of "Ex. 13. 8.2. them perish from their seed.

29

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k ver. 20.

I eh. & 17; k 56 3,6.
Zec. 2. IL

Ex. 12 17; Pa. 7. J

-7.

• ch. 2 15
Psee ver. D; chin
ch. 1. 1.

rch. 4. 3, 16.

Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote 30 with all authority, to confirm this second letter of Purim. And he sent the letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the 31 kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth, to confirm these days of Purim in their times appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their 32 seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry. And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book. 10 And the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of chas 2 the sea. And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, "whereunto the king advanced him, are they not 3 written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus,7 and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.

1 It is customary in the East, when a feast is made, to send portions to those who are unable to attend, especially to relatives and friends in affliction.

2 The Jews have set a praiseworthy example in relieving their poor on occasions of national rejoicing.

3 Purim' is the plural of Pur,' which signifies lot; the name being taken from the circumstance of Haman having cast lots to fix the day of their destruction. See note on ch. iii. 7. This national commemoration has been ever since observed by the Jews. At this festival, the whole book of Esther is read twice in the synagogues. The feast is celebrated with the greatest hilarity; alms are given to the poor; and relations and friends send presents to each other.

4 That is, their prayer; referring to ch. iv. 3, 14. Or

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Ge. 10 5: Px 72 10: Is. 24 15. *ch. f. 15; 94

ch. 2. 23

Ge. 41. : 1 Sam.
17: 2 Chr, S7
N. 2 10, P
8.,9.

the words may be understood prospectively, and may be translated thus: 'adding fasting and prayer.'

5 We have no account of the purposes to which this tribute was applied, nor of the wars which Ahasuerus waged against the Greeks and Egyptians. Scripture history extends to the affairs of heathen nations only so far as they are connected with those of the people of God. 6 These are supposed to be the isles of the Egean Sea, which had been conquered by Darius Hystaspis.

7 Like Joseph in the court of Pharaoh, Obadiah in that of Ahab, Daniel in that of Belshazzar, and Nehemiah in that of Artaxerxes. Such men cannot alter the frame of the government, nor prevent much evil; but they may keep themselves from sin, and be the instruments of effecting much good.

But it

NOTE ON THE VARIATIONS IN NUMBERS MENTIONED IN THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. IN the different records of the same events contained in the preceding books, variations in the numbers will have been observed. Some of these have already been explained in notes upon the passages in which they occur. is important further to observe that, in Hebrew and Greek, as in some other languages, numbers are expressed by the letters of the alphabet. Some of these are so much alike that the smallest possible alteration, such as would change e into e, may convert 3 into 50, or 4 into 200, or 8 into 400. In some cases, too, the addition of a dot or a line may multiply greatly the numerical power of a letter. In all cases of any real importance something may be found in the context, or in other parts, to guide us towards correctness; and in no case do these discrepancies affect any religious doctrine, or weaken the evidence of the truth of Scripture. On the contrary, they rather strengthen it;

for their existence forbids the supposition that the manuscript authorities have been tampered with in order to produce a rigid uniformity; whilst their limited extent shows how jealously God's providence has guarded his saving truth from sustaining any real injury by humaa inadvertence and error.

With reference to the numbers of armies mentioned in the history, which appear sometimes exceedingly large, it is to be remembered that in Eastern nations every person capable of bearing arms was compelled to join the host when the monarch pleased; that Oriental sovereigns seem to have prided themselves on the numbers rather than the discipline of their troops; and that the enumeration probably often includes the followers of the camp who in the East are sometimes far more numerous than those armed for battle.

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JEHOIAKIM (11 years).

606

Capture of Nineveh by the

606-5 Judah made tributary by Nebuchadnezzar. Date usually fixed for commencement of seventy years' subjection to Babylon.

Prophet Habakkuk.

Medes and Babylonians.

The Egyptians defeated by the Chaldeans at Carchemish.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR, king of

Babylon.

600

PSAMMIS, king of Egypt.

599-8 JEHOIACHIN (3 months). Jerusalem taken by the Chaldeans. Jehoiachin in exile.

595

HOPHRA (Apries), king of

594

ZEDEKIAH (Mattaniah) reigns under the Chaldean (11 years). Ezekiel appears as prophet, thirty years after Josiah's reformation, at the river Chebar in Babylonía.

594

Egypt. SOLON at Athens.

589

Zedekiah applies to

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Commencement of the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans.

588

Jeremiah in prison.

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In consulting the above Table, it is necessary to bear in mind the following remarks :-

I. The separate column of dates of contemporaneous occurrences in heathen nations does not commence until the 1st Olympiad (B.C. 776), as there is scarcely a single event, before that epoch, the date of which can be ascertained, except those which are fixed by the Bible History. Some dates in this column, such as those of the building of Rome, and of the early kings, are given according to the usual chronology; the questions which have been raised respecting many of the facts themselves not coming within the scope of this work.

II. With respect to the events of Sacred History, it will be observed that the earlier dates in this Table differ from both Usher and Hales, being founded upon a computation referred to in the Preface to the Book of Judges, which places the date of the departure from Egypt about 29 years later than the period assigned by Hales.

III. In comparing the dates found in the Books of Kings and of Chronicles respectively, and even in different parts of the same Books, we meet with difficulties which our present knowledge does not enable us completely to remove. But so near an approach to correctness is attainable as to leave a question with respect to barely ten years in about four hundred. For, beside the aid rendered by the

146

Termination of the kingdom

of Macedon.

3rd Punie war, 149–146.
Destruction of Carthage.

Corinth destroyed; and Greece
a Roman province.
The Gracchi, 131–121.

111 Jugurthine war.

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1st Mithridatic war. The social war. 2nd Mithridatic war. Sylla made dictator. 3rd Mithridatie war. Cataline's conspiracy. 1st triumvirate. Conquest of Gaul. Battle of Pharsalia.

42 2nd triumvirate.
Battle of Philippi.
Battle of Actium.
Augustus made emperor.

various readings of ancient versions, we have the follow ing helps-(1.) The careful mention of the year of a contemporary sovereign in which each of the kings began to reign frequently furnishes a clue to a correct date, notwithstanding a few errors of transcription. (2.) The length assigned to the life or reign of a king is sometimes corrected by that ascribed, with self-evident truth, to his successor. (3.) Great assistance is derived from remembering the well-known ancient principle of computation by which a part of a year was counted as a whole. It will be seen that this is successfully applied to the adjustment of the greater number of the reigns in both Israel and Judah. (4.) Some periods are settled by the facts of the history. Thus Ahaziah king of Judah, and Jehoram king of Israel, being both slain about the same time by Jehu, the date of their death and of his accession forms a starting point in the chronology, both upwards and downwards. Somewhat similar is the ascer tained agreement of the destruction of Samaria with a certain year in the reign of Hezekiah. From all this it results that the era of the co-existence of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, though presenting many intricacies which render perfect exactness unattainable, yet affords so many checks upon any serious error that there is peculiar certainty as to its general chronology.

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