529, or 530. If Cyrus was seventy, B. C. 529, or 530, he was sixty-one or sixty-two, B. C. 538, and one year younger than Cyaxares, or of the same age with him. Now all this is possible-or rather it is even probable. I see no reason whatever why each of these persons, Evil-merodach, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyaxares, the son of Astyages, Cyrus, the son of Cambyses, and Croesus, the son of Alyattes, as they were all obviously contemporaries, and all began to reign, Evil-merodach in Babylon, Cyaxares in Media, Cyrus in Persia, and Croesus in Lydia, almost at the same time, the earliest not before B. C. 562, and the latest not later than B.C. 559-should not have been strictly oμýλikes, or nearly of an equal age. Their history is blended together, at a time when they must have been arrived at an age of maturity, and either had, or might have, children arrived at the same age also; particularly that of Croesus and Cyrus. With regard to the assumed date of the birth of the latter, it requires no other supposition than that Mandane, the mother of Cyrus, was married to Cambyses, about the same time when Astyages was married to Aryenis; in other words, that Astyages, when married to Aryenis, was old enough to have a daughter of a marriageable age. This age in the East is as early as fourteen or fifteen; and if Astyages was thirty years old at the siege of Nineve, B. C. 609, he might have a daughter fourteen or fifteen years old, B. C. 600, or 599. It does not appear to have been known to Herodotus that he had any male issue; or any other daughter but Mandane: and if I may advance a conjecture, I should be inclined to think she was his only child before his marriage to Aryenis; and that she was not espoused to Cambyses until after the birth of Cyaxares. On this principle, if Cyaxares was born B. C. 600, Cyrus might be born B. C. 599, but not

before; and if he was born then, he would be seventy, B. C. 529.

We might now conclude this review of the Chronology of the kingdoms of Judah or of Israel, from the first of Solomon to the destruction of the temple; but there is still so remarkable a text, Ezekiel iv. 5, 6, which appears to me to relate to this subject, that for the sake of considering it we will still dwell somewhat longer upon it.

For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have appointed thee each day for a year.

Three hundred and ninety days plus forty days amount, on the whole, to four hundred and thirty days: which we may take it for granted are consecutive; and, on the authority of the last words of the text, are four hundred and thirty consecutive years *. The question which we should have to consider will concern only their beginning or their ending: and either of these being determined, the other is determined also.

It is to be observed, that the Hebrew and the Septuagint differed in the statement of the numbers in question. Origen, Operum iii. 414. A. B. in loc.: οὐκ ἀγνοοῦμεν δέ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων ἔχειν ρ' καὶ ν' ἡμέρας· καὶ ἄλλα 4 καὶ ρ' (190) ἡμέρας, καὶ τὰ πλείονα δὲ 4 καὶ ρ'. ἡμέρας. ἀλλ ̓ ἐπισκεψάμενοι τὰς λοιπὰς ἐκδόσεις εὖρομεν τ' εἶναι καὶ ? (390) ἡμέρας. Cf. Hieronymus, iii. 48. ad medium, in Is. v: 173. ad calcem, 174. ad principium, in Is. xvii. Syncellus, i. 433. l. 11. and 21.

The difference affected only the numbers for Israel; in the number of years for Judah there was no disagreement. And with respect to the former, Jerome, iii. 721. ad medium, in Ezech. iv. distinctly testifies that the Hebrew, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and some copies of the o' themselves, had the number 390, not that of 190 or 150. Theodorit, ii. 710-712, in Ezech. iv. 4, 5, 6. adopts the shorter

number.

Now, from iv. 8, a little lower down, And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege and also from v. 1-17, it seems to me a just inference that the precise point of time, where the four hundred and thirty years are supposed to end, is with the close of the siege of Jerusalem, B. C. 588: and consequently that the beginning, answerable thereto, was sometime B. C. 1018.

Now it may be presumptively shewn that B. C. 1018 was the year of the numbering of the people in the reign of David; a numbering, which 2 Sam. xxiv. 1. ascribes to the anger of God against Israel; and 1 Chron. xxi. 1. to the malice of Satan. These are sufficient indications of a time when the whole nation was implicated in some sin; of which also the very judgment, ultimately inflicted upon it, is a proof: and as this sin was something which concerned both Israel and Judah, it is a possible case that it might be marked out as the apxǹ of a period, expressly designed to bear the iniquity of both, for a limited duration of time since their settlement in the land of promise, until their final punishment in the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple. I say a limited duration; for four hundred and thirty years are but a comparatively small portion of 1520-588 or 932, the whole interval of time comprehended between the Eisodus, and the destruction in question. The iniquity, therefore, which was laid upon Ezekiel, and supposed to be contracted through a period merely of four hundred and thirty years, was not the accumulated iniquity of the house of Israel since they became a people, but some portion of it-which cannot be supposed to have begun until five hundred and two years afterwards. Both these criterions coincide in B. C. 1018: which, if it was the

year of the numbering of the people, was truly a year distinguished by some national defalcation, and so far a beginning of iniquity. The first year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, it is true, was similarly distinguished, and in an eminent degree; but this was by an iniquity which affected Israel exclusively, and not Judah. Besides, the true date of that iniquity was B. C. 974; from whence 390 years, the period allotted to the iniquity of Israel, would bring us to B. C. 584; and 430, the period allotted to the iniquity of Israel and of Judah both, would bring us to B.C. 544.

Now 2 Sam. xxiv. 13, whatever explanation may be given of the mention of seven years of famine, compared with 1 Chron. xxi. 12, which speaks of three, to begin in the year after the numbering, I will assume that the statements are consistent with each other; and will reason for the present from that of the Book of Chronicles, which is confirmed also by the version of the Seventy in the parallel passage of 2 Sam. xxiv. 13.

It was obviously in the power of David to have chosen these three years of famine, before either of the other alternatives: in which case it seems reasonable to suppose that it was intended by the Divine Providence he should live through them. If so, we may infer that the alternative in question was not proposed to him later than B. C. 1017, three years before the end of his reign. And the peculiar fitness with which it might be proposed to him then will appear from this consideration; that B. C. 1017 was the close of the sixth year of the sabbatic cycle; the harvest of which, unless judicially blasted and destroyed, (as at Haggai i. 9. ii. 16, 17,) should have been three times as plentiful as usual. For the first sabbatic year beginning with Tisri, B. C. 1507, the seventy-first began with Tisri B. C. 1017.

Now the numbering of the people was completed in nine months and twenty days f; and the day after the return of Joab, David received the message of Gad o: at which time, as appears from 1 Chron. xxi. 20, wheatharvest was ready to begin. It may be concluded, therefore, that the numbering began in the seventh sacred month, after the Scenopegia, B. C. 1018, and terminated in the third or fourth, about the annual recurrence of the Pentecost, B. C. 1017, when wheatharvest was ready to begin. The true year of the numbering was thus B. C. 1018*: and the chronology of the latter half of the reign of David, beginning with the birth of Solomon, will still further establish this conclusion.

Eupolemus, as quoted by Eusebius, supposes Solomon to have been twelve years old when he came to the throne † ; and Josephus supposes him to have been fourteen. His true age, I believe, to have been seventeen; for he reigned only forty years—yet Rehoboam, who succeeded him, was forty-one years old at his death; and consequently was born at the latest in the first year of his father's reign: which is much more probable, if Solomon was then in his eighteenth year, than if he was in his fifteenth, or merely in his thir

* As the temple itself was ultimately built on the site of the threshing floor of Araunah, where the plague was stayed, (2 Chron. iii. 1,) this fact also supplies some degree of corroboration to the truth of the construction put upon the text in Ezekiel.

+ So likewise the interpolated Epistle of Ignatius ad Magnesianos, cap. iii: apud Patres

Apostolicos, 888. E: and Jerome, iii. 36. ad medium, in Isai. iii.: Et e contrario Salomon duodecim annorum erat quando suscepit imperium. Chrysostom also has the same statement, in Isai. iii. : Operum vi. 35. §. 3. D. and the Hypomnesticon of Joseph, lib. iv. cap. 74. p. 171. 176. Cf. Hieronymus, ii. 619. ad calcem. Epistolæ Criticæ.

f 2 Sam. xxiv. 8. g Ibid. 11. h Præparatio Evangelica, ix. 30. 447. B. D.

i Ant. Jud. viii. vii. 8.