of Cyaxares, which is too early for his son Astyages to have a daughter marriageable, or for Nebuchadnezzar to be of age sufficient to take her to wife: for, after this rate, Nebuchadnezzar must be allowed to have been at the least eighty-five years old at the time of his death, and Astyages much older, which is an age very unlikely for such to live, who usually waste their lives, both by luxury and fatigue, much faster than other men.

At the destruction of this city of Nineveh ended the book of Tobit. It was first writtent in Chaldee by some Babylonian Jew, and seems, in its original draught, to have been the memoirs of the family to which it relates; first begun by Tobit, then continued by Tobias, and lastly finished by some other of the family, and afterwards digested by the Chaldee author into that form in which we now have it. Jerome" translated it out of the Chaldee into Latin, and his translation is that which we have in the vulgar Latin edition of the Bible. But there is a Greek version much ancienter than this; for we find it made use of by Polycarp, Clemens Alexandrinus, and other fathers, who were before Jerome; and from this hath been made the Syriac version, and also that which we have in English among the apocryphal writers in our Bible. But the Chaldee original is not now extant. The Hebrew copies which go about of this book, as well as that of Judith, seem both to be of a modern composure. It being easier to settle the chronology of this book than that of the book of Judith, it hath met with much less opposition from learned men, and is generally looked on, both by Jews and Christians, as a genuine and true history; though, as to some matters in it (as particularly that of the angel's accompanying of Tobias in a long journey under the shape of Azarias, the story of Raguel's daughter, the frighting away of the devil by the smoke of the heart and liver of a fish,

s For, according to this account, this marriage must have been twentyone years before Nebuchadnezzar began to reign, and he reigned fortythree years; and it must also have been thirty-one years before Astyages began to reign, and he reigned thirty years.

t Præfatio Hieronymi in Tobiam.

They are generally thought to have been made by Munster.

and the curing of Tobit's blindness by the gall of the same fish,) it is much less reconcileable to a rational credibility; for these things look more like the fictions of Homer than the writings of a sacred historian, and give an objection against this book which doth not lie against the other. However, it may excellently well serve to represent unto us the duties of charity and patience, in the example of Tobit's ready helping his brethren in distress to the utmost of his power, and his bearing with a pious submission the calamities of his captivity, poverty, and blindness, as long as inflicted upon him. The Latin and Greek versions of this book, which I have mentioned, do much differ, each having some particulars in it which are wanting in the other. But here the Latin version must give place to the Greek. For Jerome made it, before he himself understood Chaldee, by the help of a learned Jew, from whose mouth, he tells us, he wrote down in Latin what the other rendered into Hebrew from the original, and in this manner finished the whole work in one day's time; and a work so done must undoubtedly have abundance of mistakes as well as inaccuracies in it. But his translationy of Judith was made afterwards, when, by his farther studies in the oriental languages, he had rendered himself as much master of the Chaldee as he was before of the Hebrew; and he did it with great care, comparing diligently many various copies, and making use only of such as he found to be the best; and therefore his version of that book may well deserve an authority beyond the Greek, which cannot be claimed for the other. If the copy which Jerome translated his Tobit from were a true copy, and he were not mistaken in the version, there is one passage in it which absolutely overthrows the whole authority of the book: for (ch. xiv, 7,) there is mention made of the temple of Jerusalem as then burned and destroyed, which makes the whole of it utterly inconsistent with the times in which it is placed. The Greek version, as also the English, which is taken from it, I acknowledge, speak only prophetically of it, as of

x Hieronymi Præfatio in Tobiam.

y Hieronymi Præfatio in Librum Judith.

that which was to be done, and not historically, as of that which was already done, as Jerome's doth. However, this Latin edition is that which the church of Rome hath canonized. If the historical ground-plot of the book be true, which is the most that can be said of it, yet certainly it is interlarded with many fictions of the invention of him that wrote it.

The Babylonians and the Medes having thus destroyed Nineveh, as is above related, they became so formidable hereon, as raised the jealousy of all their neighbours; and therefore, to put a stop to their growing greatness, Necho, king of Egypt, in the thirtyfirst year of king Josiah, marched with a great army, towards the Euphrates to make war upon them. The words of Josephus are, a That it was to make war, upon the Medes and 'Babylonians, who had dissolved, the Assyrian empire;' which plainly shews, that this war was commenced immediately upon that dissolution, and consequently, that the destruction of Nineveh, whereby this dissolution was brought to pass, was just before this war, in the year where, according to Eusebius, I have placed it.

An. 610. Josiah 31.

On Necho's taking his way through Judea, Josiah resolved to impede his march; and therefore, getting together his forces, he posted himself in the valley of Megiddo, there to stop his passage: whereon Necho sent ambassadors unto him, to let him know, that he had no design upon him, that the war he was engaged in was against others; and therefore advised him not to meddle with him, lest it should turn to his hurt. But Josiah not hearkening thereto. on Necho's marching up to the place where he was posted to stop his passage, it there came to a battle between them; wherein Josiah was not only overthrown, but also unfortunately received a wound, of which, on his return to Jerusalem, he there died, after he had reigned thirty-one years.

It is the notion of many, that Josiah engaged rashly and unadvisedly in this war, upon an over confidence

z Herodotus lib. 2. Josephus Antiq. lib. 10, c. 6.

a Josephus Antiq. lib. 10, c. 6.

b 2 Kings xxxiii, 29, 30. 2 Chron. xxxv, 20-25.
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in the merit of his own righteousness; as if God, for this reason, must necessarily have given him success in every war which he should engage himself in. But this would be a presumption very unworthy of so religious a person. There was another reason that engaged him in this undertaking, which hath been above hinted at. From the time of Manasseh's restoration, the kings of Judah were homagers to the kings of Babylon, and bound by oath to adhere to them against all their enemies, especially against the Egyptians, and to defend that border of their empire against them; and for this purpose, they seem to have had conferred on them the rest of the land of Canaan, that which had formerly been possessed by the other ten tribes, till conquered from them by the Assyrians. It is certain Josiah had the whole land of Israel in the same extent in which it had been held by David and Solomon, before it was divided into two kingdoms. For his reformation went through all of it; and it was executed by him, not only in Bethel, (where one of Jeroboam's calves stood,) but also in every other part thereof, and with the same sovereign authority as in Judea itself; and therefore he must have been king of the whole. And it is to be remarked, that the battle was fought, not within the territories of Judea, but at Megiddo, a town of the tribe of Manasseh, lying in the middle of the kingdom of Israel, where Josiah would have had nothing to do, had he not been king of that kingdom also, as well as of the other of Judah: and he could have had it no otherwise, but by grant from the king of Babylon, a province of whose empire it was made by the conquest of it, first begun by Tiglath-Pileser, and afterwards finished by Salmaneser and Esarhaddon. And if this grant was not upon the express conditions which I have mentioned, yet whatsoever other terms there were of this concession, most certainly fidelity to the sovereign paramount, and a steady adherence to his interest, against all his enemies, was always required in such cases, and an oath of God exacted for the performance hereof. And it is not to be doubted, but that Josiah had taken such an oath to Nabopolassar, the then reigning king of

Babylon, as Jehoiakim and Zedekiah afterwards did to Nebuchadnezzar, his son and successor in that empire; and therefore, should Josiah, when under such an obligation, have permitted an enemy of the king of Babylon to pass through his country to make war upon him, without any opposition, it would plainly have amounted to a breach of his oath, and a violation of that fidelity which he had in the name of his God sworn unto him, which so good and just a man as Josiah was, could not but absolutely detest. For, although the Romanists make nothing of breaking faith with heretics, yet the breaking of faith with an heathen was condemned by God himself in Jehoiakim and Zedekiah; and most certainly it would have been condemned in Josiah also, had he become guilty of it; which being what a person so well instructed in religion as Josiah was, could not but be thoroughly convinced of, the sense which he had of his duty, in this particular, seems solely to have been that which engaged him in this war, in which he perished: and with him perished all the glory, honour, and prosperity of the Jewish nation; for, after that, nothing else ensued but a dismal scene of God's judgments upon the land, till at length, all Judah and Jerusalem were swallowed up by them in a woful destruction.

The death of so excellent a prince was deservedly lamented by all his people, and by none more than by Jeremiah the prophet, who had a thorough sense of the greatness of the loss, and also a full foresight of the great calamities that were afterwards to follow upon the whole people of the Jews; and therefore, while his heart was full with the view of both, he wrote a song of lamentation upon this doleful occad sion, as he afterwards did another upon the destruction of Jerusalem. This last is that which we still have; the other is not now extant.

Megiddo, where the battle was fought, was a city f in the tribe of Manasseh, on this side Jordan, which is by Herodotus called Magdolum, nigh it was the

c Ezek. xvi, 13-19.

d 2 Chron. xxxv, 25.

e This last, referring throughout to the destruction of Jerusalem, could not be that which was wrote upon the death of Josiah. f Josh. xvii, 11. Judges i, 27.