iv. They were celebrated for their archers: see chap. xxii. 6. Jer. xlix. 35. Probably their neighbours and allies, the Medes, dealt much in the same sort of arms. In Psal. xviii. 35. and Job xx. 24. mention is made of a bow of brass: if the Persian bows were of metal, we may easily conceive, that with a metalline bow of three cubits length, and proportiona. bly strong, the soldiers might dash and slay the young men, the weaker and unresisting part of the inhabitants (for they are joined with the fruit of the womb and the children), in the general carnage on taking the city. 18. And on the fruit-] A MS. reads by. And nine MSS. (three ancient) and two editions, with LXX, Vulg. Syr. add likewise the conjunction toy afterward.

19. And Babylon] The great city of Babylon was at this time rising to its height of glory, while the prophet Isaiah was repeatedly denouncing its utter destruction. From the first of Hezekiah to the first of Nebuchadnezzar, under whom it was brought to the highest degree of strength and splendour, are about 120 years. I will here very briefly mention some particulars of the greatness of the place, and note the several steps by which this remarkable prophecy was at length acccomplished in the total ruin of it.

It was, according to the lowest account given of it by ancient historians, a regular square, forty-five miles in compass, enclosed by a wall two hundred feet high, fifty broad; in which there were a hundred gates of brass. Its principal ornaments were the temple of Belus, in the middle of which was a tower of eight stories of building, upon a base of a quarter of a mile square; a most magnificent palace; and the famous hanging gardens; which were an artificial mountain, raised upon arches, and planted with trees of the largest as well as the most beautiful sorts.

Cyrus took the city, by diverting the waters of the Euphrates, which ran through the midst of it, and entering the place at night by the dry channel. The river being never restored afterward to its proper course, overflowed the whole country, and made it little better than a great morass: this, and the great slaughter of the inhabitants, with other bad consequences of the taking of the city, was the first step to the ruin of the place. The Persian monarchs ever regarded it with a jealous eye; they kept it under, and took care to prevent its recovering its former greatness. Darius Hystaspis not long afterward most severely punished it for a revolt, greatly depopulated the place, lowered the walls, and demolished the gates. Xerxes destroyed the temples, and with the rest the great temple of Belus. Herod iii. 159. Arrian. Exp. Alexandri, Lib. vii. The building of Seleucia on the Tigris exhausted Babylon by its neighbourhood, as well as by the immediate loss of inhabitants taken away by Seleucus to people his new city. Strabo, Lib. xvi. A king of the Parthians soon after carried away into slavery a great number of the inhabitants, and burned and destroyed the most beautiful parts of the city. Valesii Excerpt. Diodori, p. 377. Strabo (ibid.) says, that in his time great part of it was a mere desert: that the Persians had partly destroyed it; and that time, and the neglect of the Macedonians, while they were masters of it, had nearly completed its destruction. Jerom (in loc.) says, that in his time it was quite in ruins, and that the walls served only for

the enclosure of a park or forest for the king's hunting. Modern travellers, who have endeavoured to find the remains of it, have given but a very unsatisfactory account of their success: what Benjamin of Tudela and Pietro della Valle supposed to have been some of its ruins, Tavernier thinks are the remains of some late Arabian building. Upon the whole, Babylon is so utterly annihilated, that even the place, where this wonder of the world stood, cannot now be determined with any certainty. See also note on chap. xliii. 14.

We are astonished at the accounts which ancient historians of the best credit give, of the immense extent, height, and thickness of the walls of Nineveh and Babylon: nor are we less astonished, when we are assured by the concurrent testimony of modern travellers, that no remains, not the least traces, of these prodigious works are now to be found. Our wonder will, I think, be moderated in both respects, if we consider the fabric of these celebrated walls, and the nature of the materials of which they consisted. Buildings in the east have always been, and are to this day, made of earth or clay mixed or beat up with straw, to make the parts cohere, and dried only in the sun. This is their method of making bricks. See note on chap. ix. 9. The walls of the city were built of the earth digged out on the spot, and dried upon the place; by which means both the ditch and the wall were at once formed; the former furnishing materials for the latter. That the walls of Babylon were of this kind is well known; and Berosus expressly says, (apud Joseph. Antiq. x. 11.) that Nebuchadnezzar added three new walls both to the old and new city, partly of brick and bitumen, and partly of brick alone. A wall of this sort must have a great thickness in proportion to its height, otherwise it cannot stand. The thickness of the walls of Babylon is said to have been one-fourth of their height; which seems to have been no more than was absolutely necessary. Maundrell, speaking of the garden walls of Damascus; "They are,” says he, “of a very singular structure. They are built of great pieces of earth, made in the fashion of brick, and hardened in the sun. In their dimensions they are two yards long each, and somewhat more than one broad, and half a yard thick." And afterward, speaking of the walls of the houses; "From this dirty way of building they have this amongst other inconveniences, that upon any violent rain the whole city becomes, by the washing of the houses, as it were a quagmire.” p. 124. And see note on chap. xxx. 13. When a wall of this sort comes to be out of repair, and is neglected, it is easy to conceive the necessary consequences; namely, that in no long course of ages it must be totally destroyed by the beavy rains, and at length washed away, and reduced to its original earth.

22. —in their palaces], a plain mistake, I presume, for

.It is so corrected in one MS .בארמנותיו

« Πουλυποδες δ' εν εμοί θαλαμας, φωκαίτε μελαίναι,
Οικια ποιήσονται ακηδέα, χητεί λαων.”

Homer. Hymn. in Apol. 77.

Of which the following passage of Milton may be taken for a translation, though not so designed:

"And in their palaces,

Where luxury late reign'd, sea monsters whelp'd,

And stabled."

Par. Lost, xi. 750.

CHAP. XIV.

1. And will yet choose Israel.] That is, will still regard Israel as his chosen people; however he may seem to desert them, by giving them up to their enemies, and scattering them among the nations. Judab is sometimes called Israel; (see Ezek. xiii. 16. Mal. i. 1. ii. 11.) but the name of Jacob, and of Israel, used apparently with design in this place; each of which names includes the twelve tribes; and the other circumstances mentioned in this and the next verse, which did not in any complete sense accompany the return from the captivity of Babylon; seem to intimate, that this whole prophecy extends its views beyond that event.

3.-in that day] . The word is added in two MSS., and was in the copies from which the LXX and Vulg. translated: εv Ty ǹμɛpa ekεivy, in die illa (ý avañavort, MS. Pachom. adding y). This is a matter of no great consequence: however, it restores the text to the common form, almost constantly used on such occasions; and is one among many instances of a word lost out of the printed copies.

4.—this parable-] Mashal. I take this to be the general name for poetic style among the Hebrews, including every sort of it, as ranging under one or other, or all of the characters, of sententious, figurative, and sublime; which are all contained in the original notion, or in the use and application of the word mashal. Parables or proverbs, such as those of Solomon, are always expressed in short pointed sentences; frequently figurative, being formed on some comparison; generally forcible and authoritative, both in the matter and the form. And such in general is the style of the Hebrew poetry. The verb mashal signifies to rule, to exercise authority; to make equal, to compare one thing with another; to utter parables, or acute, weighty, and powerful speeches, in the form and manner of parables, though not properly such. Thus Balaam's first prophecy, Num. xxiii. 7—10. is called his mashal; though it has hardly any thing figurative in it; but it is beautifully sententious, and, from the very form and manner of it, has great spirit, force, and energy. Thus Job's last speeches, in answer to the three friends, chap. xxvii.-xxxi. are called mashals; from no one particular character which discriminates them from the rest of the poem, but from the sublime, the figurative, the sententious manner, which equally prevails through the whole poem, and makes it one of the first and most eminent examples extant of the truly great and beautiful in poetic style.

The LXX in this place render the word by Opnvos, a lamentation. They plainly consider the speech here introduced as a piece of poetry; and of that species of poetry which we call the elegiac: either from the subject, it being a poem on the fall and death of the king of Babylon; or from the form of the composition, which is of the longer sort of Hebrew verse, in which the Lamentations of Jeremiah, called by the LXX @pnvoi, are written.

11. ―thy covering] Twenty-eight MSS. (ten ancient), and seven editions, with the LXX and Vulg. read, in the singular number. 12. O Lucifer, son of the morning] See note on xiii. 10.

13.—the mount of the divine presence-] It appears plainly from Exod' xxv. 22. and xxix. 42, 43. where God appoints the place of meeting with Moses, and promises to meet with him before the ark, to commune with him, and to speak unto him; and to meet the children of Israel at the door of the tabernacle; that the tabernacle, and afterward the temple, and mount Sion (or Moriah, which is reckoned a part of Sion), whereon it stood, was called the tabernacle, and the mount of convention, or of appointment; not from the people's assembling there to perform the services of their religion (which is what our translation expresses by calling it the tabernacle of the congregation), but because God appointed that for the place where He himself would meet with Moses, and commune with him, and would meet with the people. Therefore, TV, or SN, means the place appointed by God, where he would present himself; agreeably to which I have rendered it in this place, the mount of the divine presence.

19. —like the tree abominated] That is, as an object of abomination and detestation; such as the tree is on which a malefactor has been hanged. "It is written," saith St. Paul, Gal. iii. 13. "cursed is every man that hangeth on a tree:" from Deut. xxi. 23. The Jews therefore held also as accursed and polluted the tree itself on which a malefactor had been executed, or on which he had been banged after having been put to death by stoning. "Non suspendunt super arbore, quæ radicibus solo adhæreat; sed super ligno eradicato, ut ne sit excisio molesta; nam lignum, super quo fuit aliquis suspensus, cum suspendioso sepeliter; ne maneat illi malum nomen, et dicant homines, Istud est lignum, in quo suspensus est ille, & dewa. Sic lapis, quo aliquis fuit lapidatus; et gladius, quo fuit occisus is qui est occisus; et sudarium sive mantile, quo fuit aliquis strangulatus; omnia hæc cum iis, qui perierunt, sepeliuntur.” Maimonides, apud Casaub. in Baron. Exercitat. xvi. An. 34. Num. 134. "Cum ataque homo suspensus, maximæ esset abominationi, - Judæi quoque præ cæteris abominabantur lignum quo fuerat suspensus, ita ut illud quoque terra tegerent, tanquam rem abominabilem. Unde interpres Chaldæus hæc verba transtulit on, sicut virgultum absconditum, sive sepultum." Kalinski, Vaticinia Observationibus Illustrata, p. 342. Agreeably to which, Theodoret, Hist. Ecclesiast. i. 17, 18. in his account of the finding of the cross by Helena, says, that the three crosses were buried in the earth near the place of our Lord's sepulchre.

Ibid. -clothed with the slain.] Thirty-five MSS. (ten ancient), and three editions, have the word fully written . It is not a noun, but the participle passive: thrown out among the common slain, and covered with the dead bodies. So ver. 11. the earth-worm is said to be his bedcovering.

20. Because thou hast destroyed thy country; thou hast slain thy people.] Xenophon gives an instance of this king's wanton cruelty in killing the son of Gobrias, on no other provocation than that, in bunting, be struck a boar and a lion, which the king had missed. Cyrop. iv. p. 309. 23. I will plunge it-] I have here very nearly followed the version of the LXX: the reasons for which see in the last note on De Poesi Hebr. Prælect. xxviii.

25. To crush the Assyrian-on my mountains] The Assyrians and Babylonians are the same people: Herod. i. 199, 200. Babylon is reckoned the principal city in Assyria: ibid. 178. Strabo says the same thing; Lib. xvi. sub init. The circumstance of this judgment's being to be executed on God's mountains is of importance: it may mean the destruction of Senacherib's army near Jerusalem; and have still a further view: compare Ezek. xxxix. 4. and see Lowth on this place of Isaiah.

28. Uzziah had subdued the Philistines, 2 Chron. xxvi. 6, 7; but taking advantage of the weak reign of Ahaz, they invaded Judea, and took and held in possession some cities in the southern part of the kingdom. On the death of Ahaz, Isaiah delivers this prophecy, threatening them with the destruction that Hezekiah, his son, and great-grandson of Uzziah, should bring upon them: which he effected; for "he smote the Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof." 2 Kings xviii. 8. Uzziah therefore must be meant by the rod that smote them, and by the serpent, from whom should spring the flying fiery serpent; that is, Hezekiab, a much more terrible enemy than even Uzziah had been.

30.—he will slay] The LXX read, in the third person, aveλel ; and so Chald. The Vulgate remedies the confusion of persons in the present text, by reading both the verbs in the first person.

31.-from the north cometh a smoke] That is, a cloud of dust, raised by the march of Hezekiah's army against Philistia; which lay to the southwest from Jerusalem. A great dust raised has, at a distance, the appearance of smoke: "fumantes pulvere campi." Virg. Æn. xi. 908.

32. —to the ambassadors of the nations] The LXX read □”), εOvwv, plural; and so the Chaldee, and one MS. The ambassadors of the neighbouring nations, that send to congratulate Hezekiah on his success; which in his answer he will ascribe to the protection of God. See 2 Chron. xxxii. 23. Or, if, singular, the reading of the text, be preferred, the ambassadors sent by the Philistines to demand peace.

CHAP. XV.

This and the following chapter, taken together, make one entire prophecy, very improperly divided into two parts. The time of the delivery, and consequently of the completion of it, which was to be in three years from that time, is uncertain; the former not being marked in the prophecy itself, nor the latter recorded in history. But the most probable account is, that it was delivered soon after the foregoing, in the first year of Hezekiah: and that it was accomplished in his fourth year, when Shalmanesar invaded the kingdom of Israel. He might probably march through Moab; and, to secure every thing behind him, possess himself of the whole country, by taking their principal strong places, Ar and Kirbares.

Jeremiah has happily introduced much of this prophecy of Isaiah into his own larger prophecy against the same people in his forty-eighth chapter; denouncing God's judgments on Moab, subsequent to the calamity here foretold, and to be executed by Nebuchadnezzar: by which means several mistakes in the present text of both prophets may be rectified.