A. M. 3001. of the tutelary god of some of his Gentile neighbours; and, as he was to cross the sea, &c. or 1654. to select, for his patron and protector, the god whom the winds and waves were supposed 1003, &c. to obey. Ant. Chris. or 757. With his head probably full of these notions, "Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and with this view went down to Joppa. And he found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord." (a) Every one knows that Joppa, now Jaffa, was a sea-port town of Palestine on the shore of the Mediterranean; and the object of the prophet in embarking there, appears plainly to have been to proceed to some very distant region westward, that he might get as far as possible from Nineveh, and the presence of the Lord! As he had deserted the God of Israel, we may suppose, that on his arrival at Joppa, he put himself under the protection of the deity of the place, made his oblations at the altar, and worshipped at the shrine. But the late learned Mr Bryant has sufficiently proved, (b) that the chief object of worship at Joppa was Venus-piscis, Atargatis, or Derceto; that the same deity, which in some places was considered as a male, and in others as a female, was always represented by the figure of a large fish, with the head and breasts of a man or woman growing out of its mouth; and this deity, whether considered male or female, is always represented as the sovereign of the seas, to whom the winds and waves paid passive obedience. Indeed the idolatrous worship of the Cetus or Ceto appears to have been of the most remote antiquity, and to have prevailed over almost all the East; for that such an idol was worshipped among the Assyrians and Babylonians, the account which Berosus gives of the intelligent animal called Oannes, which in the reign of the first Alorus came out of the Red Sea, and appeared near Babylonia, leaves no room for doubt. That animal, he says, had the entire body of a fish, with the head of a man beneath the fish's head, and with human feet which came out of the fish's tail; (c) and the first Indian Avatar in which Veeshnou is represented in the form of a fish blazing with gold, and extending a million of leagues, is a proof that the same species of idolatry prevailed at a very early period in Hindoostan (d). Under the shelter and sanction of this monstrous deity—the god or goddess of Joppa, the apostate prophet thought to elude the all-seeing eye of Providence. * "But, says Mr Bryant, the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest. Every person called upon his god, and those of Joppa must have applied to their marine deity, the Cetus, but they could obtain no help They suspected that some body under a curse was on board; and that this evil came upon them for affording him shelter. They therefore cast lots of enquiry, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Confirmed in their opinion that he was some devoted person, they asked him strictly about his occupation and country, and for what cause this evil had come upon them. He told them that he was, by nation, a Hebrew, and that he feared the Lord God of heaven, who had mude the sea and the dry land; whom, however, he had deserted, and from whose presence he had endeavoured to flee. He possibly may have added, that he had, in consequence of it, put himself under the protection of another power, the deity of Joppa, who was supposed to rule both the winds and the waves. Then vere the men exceedingly afraid; and they had particular reason so to be; for they found that the tempest which prevailed was raised by the God of Israel, whom they did not serve; and that all the deities to whom they had applied, could not allay it. The superiority therefore of the God of Israel over the god of Joppa was manifest. Then said they un (a) Jonah i. 3. a male at Ashdod ties, vol. ii. p. 261, (b) Observations upon some passages in Scripture, part. iv. Dagon was or Azotus; but the same marine deity appears to have been considered as a goddess at (c) See Hales's Analysis, &c. vol. iii. p. 10. (d) Maurice's Indian Antiqui and Asiat. Research, vol. i. viii. to the end of 2 Chron. to him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?—And he said unto From 1 Kings them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you. This he must have said by a Divine cogency-ovEUGTOS; otherwise he could not have been so certain of the consequences." With much reluctance, and after rowing hard to carry the ship back to the port from which she had sailed, the mariners took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging Then the men feared the Lord greatly, and offered sacrifices unto the Lord, and made vows.' These vows we may imagine to have been, that they would for the future reverence the true God, whom the winds and seas obeyed, and not put their trust in their national deities, whose inferiority had been so manifest, and in whom there was no help.” 6 If this was the case, and it could not be otherwise, here was one important objectthe conversion of the idolatrous mariners and other passengers on board the ship-gained by this tremendous miracle. "But before they could have offered any sacrifice (though the fact is mentioned afterwards), the Lord had prepared a'great fish to swallow up Jonah. This, we may presume, was done immediately, when the prophet was cast over board into the sea; and consequently the mariners in the ship must to their astonishment have seen the process. They must have beheld a real leviathan of the deep acting as an instrument of heaven, against which their imaginary and emblematical deity had no power. Neither Dagon, nor Atargatis, nor Oannes of Babylon, nor Veeshnou of Hindoostan, nor Ceto of Joppa, could prevent one of the community, and a votary, from being entombed in the body of this monster." Had the process indeed st pt here, the devouring of Jonah by the great fish in the presence of the mariners, might have had a tendency to confirm them in their base worship of Derceto rather than to convert them to the worship of the God of Israel. If they possessed any portion of that perverse obstinacy, which characterises modern unbelievers in general, they would undoubtedly have concluded, from witnessing so tremendous a scene, and the calm by which it was instantly succeeded, that their deity was the great power which Jonah had offended; that she had therefore stirred up a tempest in the ocean, to avenge herself on this occasional worshipper of Jehovah; and that as soon as she had accomplished that object, she took compassion on her faithful adherents; but the conclusion of the scene rendered it impossible to make seriously such reflections as these. "As the mariners, to use the words of Bryant, had laboured for a while to gain the land, but were prevented; we may suppose that after the storm was over, they returned in their shattered vessel to their haven at Joppa, and there gave a full account of this wonderful event. The prophet, too, after he had been for an appointed time consigned to a death-like darkness in the body of the fish, was brought to light, and freed from his imprisonment." The Scripture indeed does not expressly say that the ship returned to the haven of Joppa, nor that the prophet was restored to the same coast and among the same people, from which he had set out on his disastrous voyage; but there can be no doubt but that such was the case. The storm appears to have come on immediately after the ship left the harbour; she was like to have been broken in pieces by its violence; and as the mariners had rowed hard to bring her to land, whilst it lasted, they would surely bring her to the nearest land which they could make. Jonah too was still to be sent on his embassy to Nineveh; and it is not conceivable that the fish should be guided with her cargo to a coast, whence the prophet could not, without another voyage, reach that city. On the coast near Joppa therefore" the Cetus was undoubtedly stranded; and in its last efforts and agonies, within view of the temple of Derceto, it disgorged the apostate prophet. This afforded a salutary lesson to the people of the place." If any of them had been induced by the narrative of the mariners to infer that the storm had been raised and made to cease by the power of their god or goddess, such an inference must have been completely done away by this last event, which exhibited Ant. Chris. or 747. A. M. 3001, the emblem of the divinity which they adored as the mere instrument employed by &c. or 4651 the God of Israel to carry his designs into effect. The prophet, who had deserted the 1003, &c. God of his fathers, and placed himself under the protection of the gods of Joppa, they had seen swallowed up by the greatest of these gods; and though they might at first suppose that this was done to punish him for his occasionally worshipping the God of Israel, they could think so no longer, after seeing the monster disgorge him uninjured, and perish itself. They saw him likewise set out on his mission to Nineveh to preach against the enormous wickedness of the people, and against the worship of all such gods as Derceto; and if, by this, they were not convinced that Jehovah was the only God, it is impossible that they could longer doubt of his superiority over their gods, or of his being indeed GOD OF GODS and LORD OF LORDS. But it was not on the people of Joppa and its neighbourhood only that these miracles must have had a salutary effect. "May we not," says Dr Hales, (a)" attribute the immediate influence and authority of Jonah's preaching on the Ninevites, after his miraculous deliverance from the great fish, to their thinking that he came in the spirit and power of Oannes as an ambassador from God ?” I think, we may safely attribute to some notion of this kind, their giving him at first a patient hearing; but when they came to learn from him the whole truth, as undoubtedly they did learn it, and had that truth confirmed, as they would surely make inquiry, by all the inhabitants of Joppa and its neighbourhood, they would soon come to suspect that all their traditionary stories of Oannes were either absurd fables, or gross corruptions of some ancient truths; and there can be little doubt, but that, for a time at least, the worship of the Ninevites would be chiefly if not solely paid to the God of Israel. Thus we see that the perverseness of Jonah, and even his propensity to worship the gods of the heathen, made him a much fitter instrument, than Isaiah or any other pious and virtuous prophet could have been in the hands of the true God, to give a check to the progress of idolatry and vice both in Nineveh and at Joppa. This miracle therefore had the greatest moral fitness possible for diffusing the knowledge of the true God through the world-the very purpose, for which not only alì such miracles appear to have been wrought, but for which the children of Israel were kept distinct from other nations.] (a) Analysis, &c. vol. iii. p. 11. Note +. CHAPTER IV. FROM THE DEATH OF UZZIAH TO THE DEATH OF THE HISTORY. of 2 Chron. THE interregnum, † or vacancy in the throne of Israel, which lasted for two and From 1 Kings twenty years and upwards, occasioned so general a confusion, that the people at length viii. to the end came to a resolution to place Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, and the fourth + and lasts of Jehu's line, upon the throne. This happened in the eight and thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; but as he proved a wicked prince, and followed the steps of his ancestors, he did not live long to enjoy the government; for at the end of six months he was murdered by Shallum, who usurped the throne, but enjoyed it no longer than one month. For Menahem, general of the king's forces which were then besieging Tirzah, hearing of what Shallum had done, immediately raised the siege, and, marching directly to Samaria, defeated and slew Shallum; and, by the power and authority of the army, placed himself upon the throne. Not long after this, he returned with his army to Tirzah †3; but the inhabitants refusing to open the gates, he took the place by This interregnum some chronologers make longer and some shorter, according as they suppose that Zechariah reigned, more or less, in conjunction with his father: But that there was manifestly a vacancy in the throne of Israel for the time assigned, is evident from hence:-That Jeroboam the Ild, who began to reign in the fifteenth year of Amaziah king of Judah, died in the fifteenth year of Uzziah, and that his son Zechariah began not to reign till the eight and thirtieth year of the said Uzziah; so that there was plainly all this interregnum; but whence it was occasioned, whether by foreign wars, or rather by domestic confusions (as appears by the unfortunate end of the successors), we are no where told. Patrick's Commentary. + God had promised Jehu, that, for executing his will upon the house of Ahab, he would continue the crown of Israel in his family for four generations; and accordingly, Jehoahaz, Joash, Jehoram, and Zechariah, succeeded him: But because he did it, not so much in obedience to the Divine command, as to satisfy his private and ambitious views, and in a meVOL. II. thod of cruelty quite abhorrent to the Divine nature, +3 This is a place we find frequent mention of in Ant. Chris. A. M. 3001, storm, and so having spoiled it, and laid all the country waste as far as Tiphzah, he &c. or 4654. came and sat down before it: But when the people of Tiphzah, in like manner, refused to open their gates, and submit to him, without distinction of age or sex, he put them all to the sword, and, in short, was so barbarously cruel, as to rip up the very women that were with child. 1003, &c. or 757. * Pul, king of Assyria, taking the advantage of these distractions, marched with an army, and invaded the kingdom of Israel on the other side of Jordan, which lay nearest to Babylon: But Menahem, by a present of three thousand talents of silver, which he raised out of the wealthiest of his subjects, prevailed with him, not only to withdraw his forces, but to recognize his title likewise to the crown of Israel, before he left the kingdom; which was one great reason, that he held the quiet possession of it for the space of ten years, and, in the fiftieth year of Uzziah king of Judah, died, and †2 was succeeded in it by his son Pekahiah. to that kingdom. Now the reason which induced the first kings of Israel to make Tirzah the place of their residence, may be gathered from that expression in Canticles, "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,” chap. vi. 4. which certainly implies, that Tirzah was a beautiful and pleasant city to dwell in. But how famous and beautiful a place soever this city was, we have no certain account of its situation; only it is supposed by most, that as Jeroboam was of the tribe of Ephraim, he would be naturally inclined to make choice of a place within the compass of his tribe for his royal city: And this opinion is thought to receive some confirmation from the word Ephraim's being frequently used to denote the whole kingdom of Is. rael, even because its capital city was situated in that tribe. However this be, it is pretty plain from the circumstances of the story, that the Tiphzah, where Menahem exercised so much cruelty, was not the town of that name which lay upon the Euphrates, mentioned in 1 Kings iv. 21. as one of the boundaries of Solomon's dominion, but some place not far from Tirzah, and consequently, very probably in the tribe of Ephraim. Wells's Geography of the Old Testament, vol. iii. * Josephus does not indeed make mention of this particular instance of his unrelenting cruelty, but this he tells us, that, "when he had taken the town, he put all to the sword, without sparing a man, woman, or child; and that he exercised such merciless rigour and inhumanity towards his own countrymen, as would have been unpardonable even to the worst of barbarians." But by these methods he thought, no doubt, to terrify the whole kingdom, so that none might dare to withstand him. Jewish Antiq. lib. ix. c. 11. and Patrick's Commentary. This is the first time that we find any mention made of the kingdom of Assyria since the days of Nimrod, who erected a small principality there, Gen. x. 11. and Pul, or Phul, is the first monarch of that nation who invaded Israel, and began their transportation out of their country. Some are of opinion, that he was the same with Belesis, the governor of Babylon, who, together with Arbaces the Mede, slew Sardanapulus, the last of the Assyrian monarchs, and translated the empire to the Chaldeans. Our excel. lent Patrick seems to be confident in this: But according to our learned Prideaux, Belesis was one generation later; and therefore it is supposed, that this Pul was the father of Sardanapalus, who was called Sardon with the annexion of his father's name Pul, in the same manner as Merodach, king of Babylon, was called Merodach-baladan, because he was the son of Baladan. This Pul therefore was the same king of Assyria, who, when Jonah preached against Nineveh, gave great tokens of his humiliation and repentance; [or, as Dr Hales more probably thinks, the son of that king.] The only difficulty is, that he seems to have marched his army from Babylon, and not from Nineveh, and yet his son and successor we find lived at Nineveh. But then it is suggested, that, as the kings of Assyria resided sometimes at Babylon and sometimes at Nineveh, it is not improbable that Pul, to avoid the judgments which Jonah threatened against the latter, might remove to Babylon, where he resided the remaining part of his reign; and this made it so convenient for him to attack the Israelites on the other side of Jordan. Prideaux's Connection, anno 747. and Bedford's Scripture Chronology, lib. vi. This shews that Menahem was a man of great weight and consideration; since, notwithstanding all his violence and cruelty, he left the kingdom in his own family, which his two predecessors could not do. It is manifest, however, that there was a small interregnum of about a year's continuance between his death and his son's accession; for his son did not begin to reign till the fiftieth year of Uzziah, and yet he must have been dead the year before, because it is said of him, 2 Kings xv. that he began to reign in the thirty-ninth of Uzziah, and reigned but ten years. There was therefore apparently an interregnum; but what the occasion of it was, it is not so well known ; though there is room to suppose, that it proceeded from the interest of his successor, who might raise a party to keep him out of the throne, as he did afterwards to deprive him both of that and life. For (ace cording to Josephus) "He was cut to pieces, with several of his friends about him, at a public feast, by the treasonable practice of Pekah, one of his principal officers, who, seizing upon the government, reigned about twenty years, and left it at last a difficult |