GEDALIAH.

After the conquest of Judea, Nebuchadnezzar left Gedaliah governor of the land; whose father, Ahikam, was a man of considerable distinction and credit in the days of Josiah, 2 Kings xxii. 12, and in the reign of Jehoiakim, who, by his interest at court, and with the people, skreened the prophet Jeremiah from the resentment and fury of both, Jer. xxvi. 24. Gedaliah appears himself to have been also of a generous and unsuspecting disposition, wishing to promote the welfare of the people, by reconciling them to the Babylonish government; and rejecting, as a calumny, the information of an intended conspiracy against him by Ishmael, one of the seed royal of Judah, instigated by Baalis, king of the Ammonites. Hence the prophet Jeremiah, when liberated from prison, by the express order of Nebuchadnezzar himself, (who treated him with much consideration, and recommended him to the protection of Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard," who gave him provisions, and a reward, and let him go,") preferred staying with Gedaliah, his friend, and the people that were left in the land, to the captain's offer, of taking him to Babylon, and providing for him there, Jer. xxxix. 11—14, xl. 2-6; 2 Kings xxv. 22-24.

Soon after, Gedaliah was treacherously slain by Ishmael, and a party of ten men, who slew also the Jews and the Chaldeans that were with him at Mizpeh, his residence, and attempted to carry away captives to the Ammonites, the king's daughter and the residue of the people; but was prevented by Johanan and all the captains of the forces, who pursued him, and brought back the people; but Ishmael escaped with eight men only to the Ammonites, Jer. xli. 1—16.

Fearing the resentment of the Chaldeans for this massacre, Johanan, the captain, and all the people, great and small, fled to Egypt for an asylum, in spite of the remonstrances of Jeremiah, who promised them safety from THE LORD, if they remained in the land; but that they should die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, if they disobeyed the voice of the Lord, and went to Egypt: but in vain; Johanan, and all the proud men, taxed the prophet with speaking falsely, in order to give them up into the hand of the Chaldeans, to be carried away captives to Babylon; and they took with them all the

remnant of Judah, and compelled Jeremiah himself to accompany them to Taphanes, or Daphne Pelusiace, in Egypt, and they settled there, and at Migdol and Noph, or Memphis, and in the country of Pathros, or Upper Egypt, Jer. xlii. and xliii.

There Jeremiah denounced against them the approaching invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar; who should "smite the land of Egypt, and deliver such as were destined for death, to death, and such as were for captivity, to captivity, and such as were for the sword, to the sword;" he foretold also the destruction of the gods of Egypt, and of the images of Bethshemesh, and of their temples; and the delivery of Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, who should seek his life, and that only a small number of the Jews, that escaped the sword of the Chaldeans, and the famine, should return again into the land of Judah; and he concluded thus: "All the remnant of Judah that are gone to sojourn in the land of Egypt, shall know, whose word shall stand, mine or theirs," Jer. xliii. 8-13, xliv. 1-30.

This last and most ominous prophecy proved fatal to the prophet: his ungrateful and infatuated countrymen stoned him to death, and cast his body into a pit; according to ecclesiastical tradition.

THE AMMONITES, &c. SUBdued.

The year after the conquest of Judea, Nebuchadnezzar resolved to take a severe revenge upon all the surrounding nations who had solicited the Jews to a confederacy against him, or encouraged them to rebel, though they afterwards rejoiced at their destruction, and left them in the lurch; the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Arabians; the Sidonians, Tyrians, and Philistines; the Egyptians and Abyssinians, &c. Jer. xxvii. 3, Ezek. xxv. 1-3, xxvi. 1, 2, Jer. xxxvii. 7, &c.

The subjugation and desolation of all these countries by this "servant of THE LORD," as he is styled, or his scourge to chastise them, when their iniquities came to the full, was foretold in general terms; that "all these nations should serve Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and his son's son," "according to the days of one kingdom," or duration of the Babylonian dynasty, "for seventy years," (from the overthrow of Nineveh by the Babylonians and Medes, B. C. 606, to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, B. C. 536,) Jer. xxv. 11, xxix. 10, xxvii. 7, Isai. xxiii. 15.

Some of them were conquered sooner, others later, but the end of this period was the common term for the deliverance of them all, as well as the Jews, from the Babylonish captivity.

The punishment of each was particularly foretold by the prophets: the Ammonites, Amos i. 13, 15, Ezek. xxv. 4-10, &c. the Moabites, Ezek. xxv. 8-11, Jer. xxv. 21, xlviii. 40-47, &c. the Edomites, Amos i. 13-15, Obadiah 10-16, Jer. xlix. 17, &c. the Arabians, Jer. xxv. 24, &c. the Sidonians, Jer. xxv. 22, xlvii. 4, Ezek. xxviii. 21-23, &c. the Tyrians, Isai. xxiii. 1-15, Jer. xxv. 22, Ezek. xxvi. 7-13, xxvii. 2-36, &c. the Philistines, Jer. xxv. 20, Ezek. xxv. 16, Zeph. ii. 5; the Egyptians, Isai. xix. 4-23, Jer. xlvi. 13—26, Ezek. xxix. 2-12, xxx. 20-26, xxxii. 2-16, Joel iii. 19, the Ethiopians or Abyssinians, Isai. xviii. 1-7, Ezek. xxx. 4—11.

SIEGE OF TYRE.

After Nebuchadnezzar had subdued the eastern and western states, in the first campaign, he commenced the siege of the strong city of Old Tyre, on the continent, in the second year after the destruction of Jerusalem; and took it after a long and obstinate siege of thirteen years, according to the Tyrian annals, recorded by Josephus, Ant. x. 11, 1.

That the commencement of the siege is rightly assigned to the year B. C. 584, two years after the destruction of Jerusalem, may be collected from SCRIPTURE and the Tyrian annals.

1. Ezekiel, immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem, B. C. 586, prophesied the siege and destruction of Tyre, by Nebuchadnezzar, xxvi. 1-11, and in the two succeeding prophecies, he represents it "as situate at the entry of the sea;" and gives a curious account of its commerce, xxvii. 3, &c. and their king as puffed up with pride and presumption, so as to fancy himself a god, and not a man; but who should be slain as a man, xxviii. 2-9; alluding, perhaps, to his name, Ithobaal, or Ethbaal, according to the Tyrian annals, signifying, "the Master," which was a Phoenician title of God. These latter prophecies were probably delivered in the course of the ensuing year, B. C. 585, during the invasion of the neighbouring country. And a subsequent prophecy, delivered after the end of the siege, "in the twenty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's captivity, in the first month, and the first day of the month," or the first day of the year, Ezek. xxix. 17, 18, decides that the

city was taken about the end of the foregoing year, or B.C. 597-26 B. C. 571; adding, therefore, to this, the length of the siege, it began, B. C. 571 +13 B. C. 584.

2. This same date is furnished also by the Tyrian annals. From the commencement of the siege of Tyre, in the seventh year of Ithobaal, by Nebuchadnezzar, to the fourteenth of Hirom, when Cyrus obtained the sovereignty, was forty-eight years and three months*; therefore, adding these to the date of the capture of Babylon, B. C. 536; the sum gives B. C. 584, as before. Joseph. cont. Apion. i. 21.

This curious coincidence of sacred and profane chronology, establishes both; and also confirms, by the respectable authority of the Tyrian annals, the date of the capture of Babylon, B. C. 536, which was furnished by the slight correction of Ptolomy's canon, Vol. I. p. 169.

During the siege of Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar sent Nabuzaradan, with a part of the army, into Judea, to revenge the death of Gedaliah, whom he had appointed governor of the land. But the country was so thin of inhabitants, in consequence of the secession to Egypt, that he carried away captive no more than 745 persons. This was the last deportation of the Jews, in the twenty-third of Nebuchadnezzar, B. C. 582, Jer. lii. 30.

About the same time, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Elam, or Elymais, and took Shusan, or Susa, its capital, from the Medes, as foretold by Jeremiah, xxv. 25, 26, xlix. 34, 35, and Ezek. xxxii. 11-24.

In consequence of this, we learn from Xenophon, that a war broke out between the Medes and Babylonians, occasioned by

And Josephus reckons, that from the beginning of the siege to the end of the reign of Hirom, (which lasted twenty years,) was fifty-four years three months: from which, subtracting the six last years of Hirom, there remain forty-eight years three months.Cont. Apion. i. 21.

the conquests of " the king of Assyria,” in Syria, Arabia, Hyrcania, and Bactria, which threatened the safety of the Median empire and that in the course of it, Abradates, king of the Susians, renounced his alliance with the king of Assyria, and joined Cyrus, for the restoration of his wife Panthea, inviolate, after she had been taken prisoner by the Medes and Persians. Cyropæd. B. i. and vi. Xenophon dates the commencement of this war, about the twenty-seventh year of Cyrus' age, B.C. 572, in the thirty-second of Nebuchadnezzar, two years before the capture of Tyre. Still Shushan, or Susa, the capital, was recovered, or remained with the Babylonians, in the reign of Belshazzar; for we read that Daniel the prophet "was employed there, about the king's business," viii. 2. This coincidence of sacred and profane history, is curious and important; it tends also to support the credit of Xenophon as an historian in the Cyropædia, the basis of which is true, though moulded by the philosopher into an historical romance.

Before Tyre was taken, the inhabitants fled with their effects to the insular Tyre, in its neighbourhood, having the command of the sea; so that Nebuchadnezzar found but little spoil therein, as we learn from Jerom, on Isai. xxiii. 6. To this circumstance the prophet Ezekiel alludes, in his last prophecy, when he declares that "Nebuchadnezzar and his army had no wages for the great service they had served against Tyre;” in the long course of which," every head was made bald, and every shoulder peeled," Ezek. xxix. 18; and as a recompence, he promises them the plunder of " the land of Egypt, her multitude, her spoil, and her prey," vers. 19, 20.

INVASION OF EGYPT.

Accordingly, in the spring of the year, B. C. 570, after the Tyrian war was finished, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt, and quickly overran the whole extent of the country, from Migdol, its northern extremity near the Red Sea, to Syene, the southern, bordering on Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, which he also reduced, with the other auxiliaries of the Egyptians, according to prophecy, Ezek. xxx. 1—12.

In the course of this war, that "cruel lord, and fierce king," so wasted and depopulated the land with fire and sword, that it lay desolate, in a manner, for forty years; after he had defeated the proud and haughty tyrant, Hophra, or Apries, as he is called