more, which the chronology of the ensuing history makes necessary to be here supposed.

An. 635.

Josiah 6.

In the sixth year of Josiah, Phraortes, king of Media, having brought under him all the upper Asia (which is all that lay north of Mount Taurus, from Media to the river Halys,) and made the Persians also to become subject unto him, elated his thoughts on these successes, to the revenging of himself upon the Assyrians for his father's death, and accordingly marched with a great army against them, and having made himself master of the country, laid siege to Nineveh itself, the capital of the empire. But he had there the misfortune to meet with the same ill fate that his father had in the former war; for, being overthrown in the attempt, he and all his army perished in it.

m

An. 663.

Josiah 8.

Josiah, in the eighth year of his reign, being now sixteen years old, took on him the administration of the kingdom, and, beginning with the reformation of religion, endeavoured to purge it of all those corruptions, which had been introduced in the time of Ammon and Manasseh, his father, and grandfather; and did set his heart to seek the Lord his God with all his might, as did David his father.

Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes," having succeeded his father in the kingdom of Media, as soon as he had well settled himself in the government, drew together a great army to be revenged on the Assyrians for the late loss, and, having overthrown them in a great battle, led the Medes the second time to the siege of Nineveh; but, before he could make any progress therein, he was called off to defend his own territories against a new enemy. For the Scythians, from the parts about the Palus Meotis, passing round the Caucasus, had made a great inroad upon them; whereby he was forced to leave Nineveh to march against them. But he had not the same success in this war, which he had against the Assyrians; for the Scythians, having vanquished him in battle, dispossessed him of all the upper Asia, and reigned there twenty-eight years; during which time, they enlarged their conquests into Syria,

I Herodotus lib. 1

m 2 Ckron. xiv, 3.

n Herodotus lib. 1:

and as far as the borders of Egypt. But there Psammitichus, king of Egypt, having met them, prevailed with entreaties and large gifts, that they proceeded no farther, and thereby saved his country from this dangerous invasion. In this expedition, they seized on Bethshean, a city in the territories of the tribe of Manasseh on this side Jordan, and kept it as long as they continued in Asia; and therefore, from them it was afterwards called Cythopolis, or the city of the Scythians. But how far the ravages of those barbarians might affect Judea is no where said, although there can be no doubt, but that those parts, as well as the rest of Palestine, both in their march to the borders of Egypt, and also in their return from thence, must have suffered much by them. It is related of them, that in their passage through the land of the Philistines, on their return from Egypt, some of the stragglers robbedP the temple of Venus at Askelon, and that for the punishment hereof they and their posterity were afflicted with emerods for a long while after; which lets us know, that the Philistines had till then still preserved the memory of what they had formerly suffered on the account of the ark of God. For, from that time, it seems, they looked on this disease, as the proper punishment from the hand of God, for all such like sacrilegious impieties: and for this reason assigned it to the Scythians in their histories, on their charging of them there with this crime. Josiah, in the twelfth year of his reign, being now

Josiah 12.

twenty years old, and having farther improved An. 629, himself in the knowledge of God and his laws, proceeded according hereto farther to perfect that reformation, which he had begun. And therefore, making a strict inquiry, by a general progress through the land, after all the relics of idolatry which might be any where remaining therein, he broke down all the altars of Baalim with the idols erected on high before them, and all the high places, and cut down the groves, and broke in pieces all the carved images, and the molten images, and digged up the graves of

o Syncellus, p. 214. P Herodotus lib. 1.

q 1 Sam. v.

r 2 Chron, xxxiv, 3, 4, 5, &c.

the idolatrous priests, and burned their bones upon all places of idolatrous worship, thereby to pollute and defile them for ever; and when he had thus cleansed all Judah and Jerusalem, he went into the cities of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the rest of the land, that had formerly been possessed by the ten tribes of Israel (for all this was then subject to him,) and there. did the same thing.

In the thirteenth year of Josiah, Jeremiah was called to the prophetic office, which he afterwards executed for above forty years, in warn- Josiah 13. ing Judah and Jerusalem of the wrath of God

An. 628.

impending on them for their iniquities, and in calling them to repentance for the averting of it: till at length, on their continuing wholly obdurate in their evil ways, it was poured out in full measure upon both in a most calamitous destruction.

An. 626.

Josiah 15.

In the fifteenth year of Josiah, Chyniladanus, king of Babylon and Assyria, having, by his effeminacy and unprofitableness in the state, made himself contemptible to his people, Nabopolassar, who was general of his army, took this advantage to set up for himself, and, being a Babylonian by birth, made use of his interest there to sieze that part of the Assyrian empire, and reigned king of Babylon twenty-one years.

Josiah," in the eighteenth year of his reign, took especial care for the repairing of the house of An. 623. God, and therefore sent several of the chief Josiah 18, officers of his court to take an account of the

money collected for it, and to lay his command upon Hilkiah the high priest, that he should see it be forthwith laid out in the doing of the work; so that all might be put in thorough repair. The high priest, in pursuance of this order, took a general view of the house, to see what was necessary to be done; and, while he was thus examining every place, he found the authentic copy of the law of Moses. This ought to have been laid up on the side of the ark of the

s Jer. i, 2; and xxv, 3.

Χ

t Alexander Polihistor apud Eusebium in Chronico, p. 46, et apud Syncellum, p. 210.

x Deut. xxxi, 26.

covenant in the most holy place; but it was taken out thence and hid elsewhere in the time of Manasseh, as it is conjectured, that it might not be destroyed by him in the time of his iniquity. This book Hilkiah sent to the king by Shaphan the scribe, who, on his delivering of it to the king, did, by his command read some part of it to him. The place, which on the opening of the book he happened on, was (say the Jewish doctors) that part of the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, wherein are denounced the curses of God against the people of Israel, and against the king in particular (verse 26,) in case they should not keep the law which he had commanded them. On the hearing of this, Josiah rent his clothes through grief, and was seized with great fear and consternation, on the account both of himself and his people, as knowing how much they and their fathers had transgressed this law, and dreading the curses denounced against them for it. To ease his mind under this trouble and anxiety of his thoughts, he sent Hilkiah the high priest with several of his officers to Huldah the prophetess, to inquire of the Lord. The answer, which they brought back, was a sentence of destruction upon Judah and Jerusalem; but that as to Josiah, because of his repentance, the execution of it should be delayed till after his days. However, the good king to appease the wrath of God, as much as lay in his power, called together a solemn assembly of all the elders and people of Judah and Jerusalem; and, going up with them to the temple, caused the law of God to be there read to them, and after that both king and people publicly entered into a solemn covenant to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all their heart and all their soul; and to perform all the words of the covenant that were written in that book. And after this he made another progress through the land to purge it of all other abominations of idolatry or other wickedness, which might be still remaining in it, which he thoroughly rooted out in all parts of his kingdom in such manner, as is in the twenty-third chapter of the second book of Kings at large related. And par

ticularly he destroyed the altar and high place, which Jeroboam had built at Bethel, first polluting them by burning on them the bones of men, taken out of their sepulchres near adjoining, and then breaking down the altar and burning the high place and the grove, and stamping them all to powder; whereby he fulfilled what had been prophesiedy of him by name many ages before in the time of Jeroboam. And he did the same in all the rest of the cities of Samaria, destroying every remainder of idolatry, which he could any where find in any of them. And, when the next passover approached, he caused that feast to be kept with so great a solemnity and concourse of people from all parts of the land, that it not only exceeded the passover of Hezekiah, which is afore mentioned, but all other passovers from the days of Samuel the prophet to that time.

By the behaviour both of the high priest, as well as of the king, at the finding of the book of the law, it plainly appears, that neither of them had seen any copy of it before; which shews into how corrupt a state the church of the Jews was then sunk, till this good king reformed it; for although Hezekiah2 kept scribes on purpose to collect together and write out copies of the holy Scriptures, yet, through the iniquity of the times that after followed in the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, they had either been so destroyed, or else so neglected and lost, that there were then none of them left in the land, unless in some few private hands, where they were kept up and concealed till this copy was found in the temple; and therefore, after this time (by the care, we may be assured, of this religious prince,) were written out those copies of the law and other holy Scriptures then in being, which were preserved after the captivity, and out of which Ezra made his edition of them, in such a manner as will be hereafter related.'

An. 617.

Josiah 24.

In the twenty-fourth year of Josiah, a died Psammitichus, king of Egypt, after he had reigned fifty-four years, and was succeeded by Necus, his son, the same who in Scripture is called

y 2 Kings xiii, 2.

z Prov. xxv, 1.

a Herodotus lib. 1.