covenant in the most holy place; but it was taken out thence and hid elsewhere in the time of Manasseh, as it is conjectured, that it might not be destroyed by him in the time of his iniquity. This book Hilkiah sent to the king by Shaphan the scribe, who, on his delivering of it to the king, did, by his command read some part of it to him. The place, which on the opening of the book he happened on, was (say the Jewish doctors) that part of the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, wherein are denounced the curses of God against the people of Israel, and against the king in particular (verse 26,) in case they should not keep the law which he had commanded them. On the hearing of this, Josiah rent his clothes through grief, and was seized with great fear and consternation, on the account both of himself and his people, as knowing how much they and their fathers had transgressed this law, and dreading the curses denounced against them for it. To ease his mind under this trouble and anxiety of his thoughts, he sent Hilkiah the high priest with several of his officers to Huldah the prophetess, to inquire of the Lord. The answer, which they brought back, was a sentence of destruction upon Judah and Jerusalem; but that as to Josiah, because of his repentance, the execution of it should be delayed till after his days. However, the good king to appease the wrath of God, as much as lay in his power, called together a solemn assembly of all the elders and people of Judah and Jerusalem; and, going up with them to the temple, caused the law of God to be there read to them, and after that both king and people publicly entered into a solemn covenant to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all their heart and all their soul; and to perform all the words of the covenant that were written in that book. And after this he made another progress through the land to purge it of all other abominations of idolatry or other wickedness, which might be still remaining in it, which he thoroughly rooted out in all parts of his kingdom in such manner, as is in the twenty-third chapter of the second book of Kings at large related. And par

ticularly he destroyed the altar and high place, which Jeroboam had built at Bethel, first polluting them by burning on them the bones of men, taken out of their sepulchres near adjoining, and then breaking down the altar and burning the high place and the grove, and stamping them all to powder; whereby he fulfilled what had been prophesiedy of him by name many ages before in the time of Jeroboam. And he did the same in all the rest of the cities of Samaria, destroying every remainder of idolatry, which he could any where find in any of them. And, when the next passover approached, he caused that feast to be kept with so great a solemnity and concourse of people from all parts of the land, that it not only exceeded the passover of Hezekiah, which is afore mentioned, but all other passovers from the days of Samuel the prophet to that time.

By the behaviour both of the high priest, as well as of the king, at the finding of the book of the law, it plainly appears, that neither of them had seen any copy of it before; which shews into how corrupt a state the church of the Jews was then sunk, till this good king reformed it; for although Hezekiah kept scribes on purpose to collect together and write out copies of the holy Scriptures, yet, through the iniquity of the times that after followed in the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, they had either been so destroyed, or else so neglected and lost, that there were then none of them left in the land, unless in some few private hands, where they were kept up and concealed till this copy was found in the temple; and therefore, after this time (by the care, we may be assured, of this religious prince,) were written out those copies of the law and other holy Scriptures then in being, which were preserved after the captivity, and out of which Ezra made his edition of them, in such a manner as will be hereafter related.

An. 617.

Josiah 24.

In the twenty-fourth year of Josiah, a died Psammitichus, king of Egypt, after he had reigned fifty-four years,, and was succeeded by Necus, his son, the same who in Scripture is called

y 2 Kings xiii, 2.

z Prov. xxv, 1.

a Herodotus lib. 1.

Pharaoh Necho, and often mentioned there under that name. He made an attempt to join the Nile and the Red sea, by drawing a canal from the one to the other; but, after he had consumed an hundred and twenty thousand men in the work, he was forced to desist from it. But he had better success in another undertaking; for, having gotten some of the expertest of the Phoenician sailors into his service, heb sent them out by the Red sea through the straits of Babelmandel, to discover the coasts of Africa: who, having sailed round it, came home the third year through the straits of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean sea, which was a very extraordinary voyage to be made in those days, when the use of the loadstone was not known. This voyage was performed about two thousand one hundred years before Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese, by discovering the Cape of Good Hope, A. D. 1497, found out the same way from hence to the Indies, by which these Phoenicians came from thence. Since that, it hath been made the common passage thither from all these western parts of the world.

In the twenty-ninth year of the reign of Josiah, which was the twenty-third of Cyaxares in An. 612. the kingdom of Media, Nabopolassar, king Josiah 29. of Babylon, having made an affinity with Astyages, the eldest son of Cyaxares, by the marriage of Nebuchadnezzar, his son, with Amyitis, the daughter of Astyages, entered into a confederacy with him against the Assyrians; and, thereon joining their forces together, they besieged Nineveh; and after having taken the place, and slain Saracus the king (who was either the successor of Chyniladanus, or he himself under another name,) to gratify the Medes they utterly destroyed that great and ancient city; and from that time Babylon became the sole metropolis of the Assyrian empire. From the time that Esarhaddon obtained the kingdom of Babylon,d both cities equally had this honour, the king sometimes residing at Nineveh, and sometimes at Babylon; but after this Nine

b Herodotus lib. 4.

c Eusebii Chronicon. p. 124. Alexander Polyhistor apud Syncellum, p. 210, et apud Eusebium in Chronico, p. 46. Herodotus lib. 1.

d Strabo, lib. 16, p. 734.

veh lost it forever; for, although there was another city afterwards erected out of the ruins of old Nineveh, which for a long time bore, the same name, yet it never attained to the grandeur and glory of the former. It is at this day called Mosul, and is only famous for being the seat of the patriarch of the Nestorians, of which sect are most of the Christians in those parts. It is situated on the west side of the river Tigris, where was anciently only a suburb of the old Nineveh; for the city itself stood on the east side of the river, where are to be seen some of its ruins of great extent even unto this day. According to f Diodorus Siculus, the circuit of Nineveh was four hundred and eighty furlongs, which make sixty of our miles. And hence it is, that it is said in Jonah to be a city of three days journey, that is in compass, for twenty miles is as much as a man can well go in a day. Strabo saith of it that it was much bigger than Babylon; and in the same place he tells us, that the circuit of Babylon was three hundred and eighty-five furlongs, that is, forty-eight of our miles. The phrase much bigger may well extend to the other twelve miles to make it up sixty.

In this destruction of Nineveh was fulfilled the prophecies of i Jonah, Nahum, and 'Zephaniah, against it. And we are told in the book of m Tobit, that Tobias his son lived to hear of it, and that it was accomplished by Nabuchodonosor and Assuerus, which exactly agrees with the account which, out of Alexander Polyhistor, I have just above given of it. For that the Assuerus here mentioned was Astyages, appears from Daniel; for Darius the Mede, who was Cyaxares, the son of Astyages, is there called the son of Ahasuerus: and Nabuchodonosor was a name among the Babylonians commonly given to their kings, as that of Pharaoh was among the Egyptians. And that Nabopolassar in particular was so called, not only appears from the

f Lib. 2.

m Chap. xiv, 15.

n Dan. ix, 1.

e Thevenot's Travels, part 2, book 1, c. 11, p. 50. h Lib. 16, p. 737. k Chap. ii & iii. g Jonah iii, 3. i Chap. iii. 1 Chap ii, 13. o In Juchasin, Nebuchadnezar is called Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, fol. 136, and David Gaoz, under the year of the world, 3285, calls the father Nebuchadnezzar the first, and the son Nebuchadnezzar the second.

rabbinical writings of the Jews, but also from Josephus himself, a writer by reason of his antiquity, of much better authority in this matter. For, in his Antiquities, where he is speaking of this same king, he P calls him in a quotation, which is there brought out of Berosus, by the name of Nabuchodonosor; and afterwards, in his book against Apion, repeating the same quotation, he there calls him Nabullasar, the same by contraction with Nabopolassar; which plainly proves him to have been called by both these names. I know there are those who take upon them, from this passage in the book against Apion, to mend that in the Antiquities, and put Nabopolassar in both places; but I see no reason for it but their own fancy. Others may, with as good authority, from the passage in the Antiquities, mend that in the book against Apion, and put Nabuchodonosor in both places. It is certain the books of Tobit and Judith can never be reconciled with any other ancient writings, either sacred or profane, which relate to those times, unless we allow Nabuchodonosor to have been a name common to the kings of Babylon.

The archbishop of Armagh hath put this destruction of Nineveh fourteen years earlier, that is, in the last year of Chyniladanus in the canon of Ptolemy, for no other reason, I suppose, but that he reckoned that the end of his life and the end of his reign in that canon happened both at the same time, and both together in the destruction of that city: whereas, the computation of that canon being by the years of the kings that reigned at Babylon, Chyniladanus' reign there must end where Nabopolassar's begun, whether he then died or no, as it is most probable he did not, but that he continued to hold the kingdom of Assyria after he had lost that of Babylon, and that it was not till some time after that loss that Nineveh was destroyed: for Eusebius placeth the destruction of Nineveh in the twenty-third year of the reign of Cyaxares; and to put it back fourteen years, to the last of Chyniladanus in the canon, will make it fall in the ninth year

p Josephus Antiq. lib. 10, c. 11.

q Lib. 1. r In Annalibus Veteris Testamenti sub anno mundi.