lath-Pileser, 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. 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."1 The king of Assyria advanced at the request of Ahaz, and laid siege to Damascus, subdued Syria, Galilee, and all the country east of Jordan, and sent the chief inhabitants of Syria to the banks of the Kir or Kúr,—a river which, uniting its stream with the Aras or Araxes, flows into the Caspian in N. lat. 39o, -while those of Galilee were transferred to Assyria. TiglathPileser soon proved not less dangerous as an ally than he could have been in the character of an enemy. The accumulated wealth of three centuries of prosperous trade was exposed to the view of the wily Assyrian, and with it the weakness of its possessors. The Syrians were subdued; but Tiglath-Pileser, instead of retiring to his own dominions, hovered dubiously about Jerusalem.

From this point it would have been easy for him to move against the Philistines and Edomites, who during the Syrian war had invaded the southern and western frontiers of Judah, and made themselves masters of its strong cities; but it is said that "Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, came unto the king of Israel and distressed him, but strengthened him not; for Ahaz took away a portion out of the house of the Lord, and out of the house of the king and of the princes, and gave it unto the king of Assyria; but he helped him not." Ahaz and his successors had now to contend alone with the whole force of the king of Assyria, instead of with that of two petty princes.

The successor of Tiglath-Pileser was Shalmaneser, called in the apocryphal book of Tobit, Enemessar, who ascended the throne about 729 B.C. Ahaz still occupied the throne of David, and Hoshea was king of Israel. Shalmaneser now resolved to complete the subjugation of Israel begun by his predecessor. He commenced by exacting of Hoshea a tributary acknowledgment of subjection"Hoshea became his servant, and rendered him presents." Growing weary of 2 2 Chron., xxviii. 16-21. 32 Kings, xvii. 3—6.

1 2 Kings, xvi. 7—9.

54

DEPORTATION OF THE TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL.

this dependence, the king of Israel attempted to negotiate a defensive alliance with So, king of Egypt, then the only power that could pretend to rival the Assyrian, and proceeded so far as to withhold the annual tribute. Upon this rebellion, Shalmaneser advanced into Samaria, where he carried on a campaign of three years, finally imprisoned its king, and carried away the Ten Tribes into his own country. The captive Israelites were sent to Halah and Habor, two cities by the river of Gozan, and into the cities of the Medes, a fact which shows that Media was not yet separated from Assyria. In their stead a number of Assyrian families from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, and Sepharvaim, were settled in Samaria, and, mingling with the few remaining Israelites, form the Samaritan people whom we subsequently meet in the New Testament.

Mr. Dickinson' remarks upon the foregoing passage in 2 Kings, that the interpretation cannot be other than this: "To the Habor the river of Gozan," as the particle "by" has been interpolated. As regards Halah, there are no means of ascertaining precisely whether this is the name of a river or of a town; but he surmises it to be a river. The Greek translation of the Septuagint renders the passage "about the Halah, and about the Habor, rivers of Gozan."-In substantiation of this view, Mr. Dickinson quotes Edrisi: "and from Al Habor to Karkasíah is two marches; and Karkasíah is a town on the east side of the Euphrates, and under it flows the Hermas, commonly called Al Habor." This Al Habor is 250 miles west of Baghdad, near the left bank of the river Euphrates; and the name is extended to the district, stretching for miles along the banks of the river. Not many miles west of the source of this stream, stands the ruined town of Haran, or Hara, the Charræ of the ancient geographers. About fifty miles from Kerkisyah, up the Habor, at its junction with another stream, stands the town of Naharaim, or the "Town of the two Rivers." The one is the Habor, which flows down to Naharaim from a westerly direction; the other is called Al Hálih and Halah by the Arabs, and the country on its banks is called by Ptolemy, Gauzanitis: when, therefore, Mr. Dickinson observes, in the very places where it is most probable that the Israelites

2 Article on the fate of the Ten Tribes of Israel, in Jour. Royal As. Soc. vol. iv. p. 217.

were deposited, we find every name recorded in Scripture so little changed in the lapse of centuries," it is reasonable to believe that we have ascertained the locality in which the captives from Samaria were placed. Another argument in support of this theory, is, the probability that the conqueror would exchange the captives for people of his own country, as he would thus have vassals on whom he could rely, at distant points of his empire, while the malcontent foreigners being more immediately under his own eye, would be more likely to become incorporated with the Assyrians.

Sennacherib, who succeeded Shalmaneser, appears in Scripture as a worthy follower of his warlike predecessor.

Since the inglorious reign of Ahaz, the kingdom of Judah had been numbered with the many states which confessed the superior lordship of Assyria. Hezekiah was the first king. of Judah who "rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not." For fourteen years the Assyrian refrained from chastising this presumption; but in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib advanced against the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. The approach of the conqueror having opened Hezekiah's eyes to the consequences of the quarrel he had provoked; while the Assyrian camp was yet at Lachish, he sent thither messengers bearing a most full and complete submission. "I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me I will bear," was the brief but expressive supplication of the penitent king. Sennacherib received the submission, but paid no regard to the conditions by which it was accompanied. In the exercise of his re-acknowledged power, he appointed to Hezekiah a tribute of thirty talents of gold and three hundred talents of silver-a weight of bullion equal to about 266,850. sterling. When, to raise this large sum, Hezekiah had drained his own treasury, borrowed all the money of the Temple, and even stripped off the golden ornaments with which he had overlaid its doors and pillars, Sennacherib resumed the campaign, and sent his lieutenants with a large force to require the surrender of the king with his capital. The gasconading communications of these commissioners, as preserved by Isaiah, mark the arrogant and boastful character of the 22 Kings, xviii. 14.

1 2 Kings, xviii. 7.

56

DESTRUCTION OF THE ASSYRIAN HOST.

Assyrian people, and agree remarkably with the tone of the sculptures lately brought to light at Nimroud. Rabshakeh pretends that his master is the especial messenger of God, deputed to subjugate the earth: he is the Great King, the King of Assyria, and is ready not only to conquer the Jewish army, but, in pity to its weakness, to lend Hezekiah two thousand horses, &c.

"Now, therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them."

The signal catastrophe which cut short these insolent boastings, is described with beautiful simplicity by Isaiah. "Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses.'

2

Thus in one night perished 185,000 fighting men, a number which, considered as forming but one division of the invading forces, gives an exalted idea of the military power of Assyria at this time. The prophet, in the figurative style of his age and country, states that the enemy were smitten by an angel of the Lord." Isaiah's words threaten the insolent conqueror with a "hot blast," and Jeremiah speaks of them as being cut off by a destroying wind," or more literally, "a hot pestilential wind:" words which favour the probability that Sennacherib's army was destroyed by one of those hot winds which to this day sometimes destroy whole caravans.

A tradition preserved by Herodotus, who received it from his favourite authorities, the Egyptian priests, is too curious in resemblance to the Bible narrative to pass unnoticed. The priests, transferring the entire event to their own country, and the empire of their own deities, related that after the reign of Anysis, there succeeded to the throne a priest of Vulcan, named Setho, who "treated the military caste of Egypt with extreme contempt; and as if he had no occasion for their services, among other indignities, he deprived them of their aruræ, or fields of fifty feet square, which, by way of reward, his predecessors had given to each soldier. The result was, that when Sennacherib, king of Arabia and Assyria, attacked Egypt with a mighty army, the warriors whom he had thus treated refused 1 2 Kings, xviii. 23. 2 Isaiah, xxxvii. 36.

to assist him. In this perplexity, the priest retired to the shrine of his god, before which he lamented his danger and misfortunes: here he sunk into a profound sleep, and his deity promised him in a dream, that, if he marched to meet the Assyrians, he should experience no injury, for that he would furnish him with assistance. The vision inspired him with confidence; he put himself at the head of his adherents, and marched to Pelusium, the entrance of Egypt. Not a soldier accompanied the party, which was entirely composed of tradesmen and artisans. On their arrival at Pelusium, so immense a number of mice infested by night the enemy's camp, that their quivers and bows, together with what secured their shields to their arms, were gnawed in pieces. In the morning, the Arabians, finding themselves without arms, fled in confusion, and lost great numbers of their men. There is now to be seen in the temple of Vulcan a marble statue of this king, having a mouse in his hand, and with this inscription:- Whoever thou art, learn from my fortune to reverence the Gods.'"'1

Such is the narrative of Herodotus, which, confused as it is, and evidently made up by the priests, is yet obviously connected with the true story. The visit to the temple, the prayer, the vision, and deliverance are, as nearly as possible, alike in both versions, and grammarians have discovered that the title under which the Egyptian god who interposed on this occasion, was worshipped, was also ascribed to the Supreme Deity of the Jews.

The disaster which so suddenly terminated the Jewish campaign, paralysed Sennacherib's forces just as the report had reached him that Tirhakah, king of Cush or Ethiopia, one of the greatest heroes of antiquity, was on his march to attack the Assyrian territory. "And he heard say concerning Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, He is coming to make war with thee." These events determined the king to lose no time in hastening back to his capital; "So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, and went, and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh." "And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the 2 Isaiah, xxxvii. 9.

1 Euterpe, cxli.