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threatened by the Scythians of old. Here, first ir any historic record, is the only indication which the Bible contains of the name of any modern European nation.

The mighty people of RUSSIA,' through this Russia. wild invasion, has won a place in the Sacred

books. It was reserved for the Christian Apostle, still perhaps deriving his main impression from this their first historical appearance, to open that prospect in which even the savage "Scythian" should claim his place beside the polished "Greek," the Oriental" barbarian," and the inspired "Jew."2

The Invasion of Necho,

B. C. 609.

The second calamity of Josiah's reign, though connected with the first, came from a different quarter. Probably strengthened by the influx of the northern nations, the Babylonian power was now rising into an overwhelming predominance, of which the full account belongs to that portion of the Jewish history not included in this volume. On the throne of Egypt was seated a vigorous king, Necho, who wished to anticipate that growth by securing himself on the east and north. Between these two contending powers stood the kingdom of Judah, now enlarged by the accession, at least in name, of the Israelite territory. The tendency to an Egyptian alliance, which had been denounced by Isaiah in the reign. of Hezekiah, now seems to have been exchanged for an opposite policy, and as Hezekiah came across the path of Sennacherib by attaching his fortunes to Tirhakah and Sethos, so Josiah came across the path of Necho by attaching himself to the King of Assyria. Either making use of his celebrated fleet, and so landing

1 Rosh (Ezek. xxxviii. 2, 3; xxxix. 1), wrongly translated in A. V.,

2 Col. iii. 11.

"

chief prince."

at Accho, or following the track of his predecessor Psammetichus, and coming up the plains of Philistia, Necho advanced through Palestine towards the passes of Lebanon, on his way to the great battle-field of Carchemish. In the plain of Esdraelon, the scene of so many combats in the earlier history of Israel, Josiah determined, with a rashness which appeared to be against the counsels of Providence, to stay the progress of the Egyptian army. The encounter took place near Megiddo,2 at an ancient sanctuary of the two Syrian gods Hadad3 and Rimmon, on the mercantile route from Damascus to Egypt. No details are given of the battle. Everything is absorbed in the one tragical event which closed it. Josiah was in his chariot, but disguised, according to the practice of the royal families of Israel, in moments of extreme emergency. The Egyptian archers, such as we see on their monuments, discharged a volley of arrows against him. He fell he was placed in his second chariot of reserve, and carried to Jerusalem to die, and was buried in his own sepulchre, according to the usage which had prevailed since the time of Hezekiah. So mournful a death had never occurred in the Jewish annals. All the population of the city and the kingdom attended the funeral. There was an elegy over the departed King, probably as pathetic as that which David had sung over Saul and Jonathan. It was by the most plaintive of the Prophets, Jeremiah, who now first appears on the scene of public acts. Long afterwards was that sad day remembered, both as it was celebrated on the field of battle and at Jerusalem. The

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lamentation of Jeremiah was preserved in the memory of the male and female minstrels, as a national institution, even till long after the return from the Captivity.' Every family shut itself up and mourned apart. In every household the men and women mourned each apart in their own seclusion.2 In the prospect of the heaviest calamity that could befall the nation, this was the mourning which recurred to them, mourning as one mourneth for his only son, in bitterness as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. The widows were innumerable; the childless mother was left lamenting for her sons slain in battle; she laid herself down tc die; the sun of her life went down as it were in midday, as in the total eclipse of that fatal year.

Josiah was the last royal hero of Israel. With his death the history of the Jewish monarchy might end, were it not for one great event and one great person that still remain, the Fall of Jerusalem and the Prophet Jeremiah.

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1 2 Chr. xxxv. 25; 1 Esdras i. 32. Jer. xv. 7-9. (See Thenius on 2 See Jer. xxii. 18.

2 Zech. xii. 11-14.

3 Ibid. xii. 10.

This is the probable allusion of

Kings xxiii. 30.) The eclipse was on
September 30, B. C. 610. (See Grote's
Greece, iii. 313.)

JEREMIAH AND THE FALL OF

JERUSALEM.

LECTURE XL.

SPECIAL AUTHORITIES FOR THIS PERIOD.

1. The Historical and Prophetical Books.

JOSIAH.

Jer. i.v.; Zephaniah and Habakkuk; 2 Kings xxii.-xxiii. 30; 2 Chr xxxiv., xxxv.

JEHOAHAZ.

2 Kings xxiii. 30–33 (Jer. xxii. 11); 2 Chr. xxxvi. 1-4.

JEHOIAKIM.

2 Kings xxiii. 34.—xxiv. 5; 2 Chr. xxxvi. 4-8. Jer. xxvi. (with vii.—x.)
preaching in the Temple. — xviii., xix., xx., preaching in the Valley
of Hinnom and the Temple. - xlvi. 1-12, battle of Carchemish. -
xlvii. Return of Necho through Philistia. — xlviii., xlix. Moab and
Ammon
-xxv. foreign Nations. XXXV. the Rechabites.
Baruch's Recitation. xlv. Baruch's despair.

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JEHOIACHIN.

xxxvi.

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(Jer. xli. 1).

ZEDEKIAH.

Jer. xxvii., xxviii. Beginning of Revolt.

– Zech. xii.—xiii. 6; xiv.; Jer. xxxvii., xxxiv. Raising the Siege. Jer. xxi., xxxviii., xxxix. 15-18, the Prison.- Ezek. viii.-xxiii.; Jer. xxxii., xxxiii., xxxix. 1–14. Ezek. xxiv. the Siege.—Jer. xl.-xliv. Escape. Jer. xlvi. 13-28, Obadiah. Ezek. xxv.-xxxiii. March on Egypt.

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III. Illustrations from the Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions; collected in
Rawlinson's Bampton Lectures, Lecture IV., and the notes thereon.

N. B. For the arrangement of here placed in the order of the events the chapters of Jeremiah, see Ewald to which they refer.

and other commentators. They are

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