Against the advance of the Assyrians Hezekiah made what preparations he could. His force being inadequate to meet the enemy in the field, he hastened to throw garrisons into all the fortified towns, while he repaired the works which covered Jerusalem itself, and stored it for a siege. Nor did he omit to send ambassadors to Egypt, with an earnest request for succour; a proceeding which served no other purpose than to indicate, on his part, a lingering distrust either in the power or the will of Jehovah to save. Indeed, it operated so far injuriously, that the delay of the Egyptians in taking the field broke the courage of his own troops, who looked to their cooperation as the only chance of resisting effectually. Hence when town after town fell, and the capital itself seemed to be threatened, Hezekiah's heart failed him; and he made a tender of submission. A heavy fine was imposed and paid; but it purchased only a brief and insecure peace; for Sennacherib was no sooner free from a rebellion that had broken out in Ethiopia, and troubled his rear, than he resumed his operations against Judea in a more hostile spirit than before.

From the town of Lachish, before which he sat down, Sennacherib sent two of his chief officers to demand the surrender of Jerusalem. The officers employed to perform this service were not careful to soften its asperity; but neither their blasphemies against Jehovah, nor the insolent tenor of their master's letter, had any effect in dividing the Jewish people from their king. Not one word was spoken by the crowd which looked down from the city wall upon the envoy, while Hezekiah carrying the letter into the temple, spread it there before the Lord. "Fear not," was God's answer, delivered by the mouth of his prophet; "Sennacherib shall not throw up a fort

THE HOST OF SENNACHERIB DESTROYED. 209

before this city, nor shoot an arrow there." Nor, though he twice advanced for this purpose, did Sennacherib strike a blow at Jerusalem. On the first occasion, while occupied in the siege of Libnah, rumours of a Cushite invasion caused him hastily to return to Assyria. On the second a fate more ruinous and awful overtook him. Having pitched his camp before the city, and repeated his defiance of Jehovah, as the God of Judah, he and his host lay down at night to sleep. Not fewer than eighty thousand of these stout-hearted men never woke again; and the rest, dismayed at the sight of so many corpses crowding every part, lost all order and fled. Sennacherib did not long survive this blow. A conspiracy had for some time been formed to dethrone him, to which two of his own sons were parties, and these coming upon him in the temple of Nisroch, at Nineveh, whither he had gone to worship, slew him. The murderers escaped into Armenia, and their younger brother, Esar-haddon, became king.

B. C. 709.-For some time prior to this event, the Assyrian empire had been torn by many and great divisions. These, which began in the reign of Pul, and were with difficulty kept under by TiglathPileser, Shalmaneser, and Sennacherib, broke out again with redoubled violence on the death of the last-named prince; and led to the setting up of various independent monarchies, of which Media and Babylonia were the chief. A warrior called Merodach-baladan won and wore for thirty years the crown of Babylon. He sought, as was natural, support in all quarters, and did not overlook Judah while strengthening himself against the common enemy. Unfortunately for his country, Hezekiah exhibited too much eagerness in fostering this move

U

ment. He received the Babylonish messengers hospitably, promised them all for which they applied, and the more to impress them with a sense of his value as an ally, showed them both his treasures and his armoury. For this weak act Isaiah, by God's command, reproved the king, and told him that the exhibition would be remembered long after the purpose for which it was then made had been served.

B. C. 696. Hezekiah, though he promised much, seems to have fulfilled little to the rulers of Babylon. He wisely held aloof from mixing in the civil war, and devoted his energies to the improvement of his country. Under him agriculture greatly flourished; and the leading of an aqueduct into Jerusalem added much to the salubrity of the place, and the comforts of its inhabitants. Hezekiah reigned in all twenty-nine years, and died both beloved and regretted by his people.

CHAP. XXXVI.

SECOND BOOKS OF KINGS AND OF
CHRONICLES-continued.

MANASSEH. AMON. JOSIAH.

HEZEKIAH was succeeded on the throne of Judah by his son Manasseh. A mere boy, only twelve years of age, at the period of his father's demise, this prince seems to have fallen into the hands of bad advisers; and the commencement of his reign was in consequence marked by many and grievous errors. His personal vices, including idolatry of the most

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impure kind, were offensive in the sight of God and man; and his political blunders proved not less mischievous. He threw himself eagerly into the strife between Babylon and Assyria, and he suffered for it. Esar-haddon, after a desperate war of twenty-nine years, reduced the Babylonians to subjection; and having devastated Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt, marched upon Jerusalem. Manasseh, with more courage than prudence, led out his troops to meet the enemy, and sustained a signal defeat. He himself, indeed, fell into the hands of the Assyrians, and being carried to Babylon, was there cast into prison. But Judah's hour was not yet come. Wherefore the solitude of his prisonhouse awakened new thoughts in the mind of Manasseh, and Esar-haddon, who appears to have been as prudent as he was brave, accepted the apologies which his captive made, and sent him back to Jerusalem: Manasseh was not ungrateful, either to God or the king. He entirely reformed his own habits, and put down idolatry in the nation. His reign lasted in all fifty-five years; and his death was sincerely regretted.

B. C. 641.-The immediate successor of Manasseh was Amon; a young man whose crimes and follies appear to have exceeded in their extravagance and cruelty those of the worst of his predecessors. He did not keep his place more than two years. For his domestic servants conspired against him and put him to death. And then came Josiah to the throne-of whom it is recorded, "while he was yet young he began to seek after the God of David his father, and that he never afterwards diverged from this way to the right hand or to the left."

B. C. 639.-Josiah was only eight years of age when he came to the throne. He reigned in all one

and thirty years; and if anything could have arrested the judgments which its many apostacies had gathered round Judea, the unvarying piety of this good king's life and government would have done So. He began by putting down, with a strong hand, all public exhibitions of idolatry in the land. He caused all the statues and images which his predecessors had set up to be destroyed; and in order to satisfy himself that his orders had been acted upon, he made a personal progress from one extremity of the kingdom to another. At this time he fulfilled, even to the letter, God's assurance spoken at Bethel while Jeroboam offered sacrifice; for he dug up the bones of the idolatrous priests of that province, and burned them on Jeroboam's altar. He next turned his attention to the purifying and restoring of the temple, into the interior arrangements of which all manner of improprieties had crept. Hilkiah the priest received instructions to arrange all things in the order which Solomon had planned; and to throw out whatever superfluous furniture other monarchs might have introduced. Hilkiah did not fail in his duty; and while sweeping out the crevices of the pile, found in one of them a book or roll, which proved, on examination, to be an accurate copy of the law. He carried it to the king; who desired him to read. But when the priest came to those passages which declare that God would surely take vengeance for the apostacies of his people, the king rent his clothes. All the crimes of his ancestors rose up before him. He felt, as the hideous spectacle moved across his mind, that for Judah there could be no hope; and the prophets, whom he consulted, were unable to promise more, than that the inevitable evil should of come in his day.