6. Let us go up againft Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and fet a king in the midst of it, even the fon of Tabael:

7. Thus faith the LORD GOD, it fhall not ftand, neither fhall it come to pafs:

8. For the head of Syria is Damafcus, and the head of Damafcus is Rezin; and, within three score and five years, fhall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.

9. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria

is

is Remaliah's fon. If ye will not believe, furely je fhall not be established.

Thus are the nine firft verfes of the chapter rendered in our common English translation; which, in feveral places, differs from the verfion of the Seventy, (as it is called) and contains, fome variations of no little importance to the fenfe.-The principal are the following.

At the end of the fourth verfe, the Seventy add ;

For, when the fury of my wrath is accomplished, I will heal.

The fixth verfe, according to the Septuagint, ought to to be rendered

thus:

We will go up against Judea, and talking with THEM, (i. e. the inhabitants) we will gain them over to us, and we will make the fon of Tabael to reign over it.

In the feventh verfe, instead of, "thus faith the Lord God," it fhould be, with a more beautiful propriety, "thus faith the Lord of HosTS.

The eighth verfe fhould begin with BUT, instead of, For; and in the laft clause but one of

that verse,

MOREOVER

MOREOVER fhould be inferted ;-and the last clause itself, fhould receive this very important alteration, viz. "the kingdom of the people EPHRAIM

་

Shall EXPIRE ;"*-or, according to a vulgar English phrafe, give up "the ghoft."-This alteration is of the utmost confequence to the afcertaining the exact time of the completion of the prophecy.-For, it is well known, that Salmanaser took Samaria, and carried away the greater part of the inhabitants into capti

* See Matthew iii. 4. for the juftification of thus

rendering

Απο,and εκλείψει,

is not only thus rendered by heathen authors, but facred. See Genefis xxv. 8.

vity, in a little more than TWENTY years after the prophecy was delivered. But it is evident, from Efarhaddon's fubfequent invafion of it, the people of Ephraim, who were left in the land, had revolted from Affyria. He, therefore, marched into the land, took captive the people of Ephraim, who then remained,— carried them to Babylon and Affyria, -and that the land might not be defolate, transported transported Babylonians and Cuthites, to fupply the place of the Ifraelites. It was, at this time, exactly fixty-five years after the prediction, that the prophecy was fulfilled.

The