farewell, without any reply at all. And therefore it is not incredible that he should make no reply to that part of his speech which comes in incidentally, that did in no wise so naturally lead the prophet to answer.

As to the latter part of the forementioned objection which relates to the prophet's being bound in duty to forbid what Naaman declared to be his intention, or to have manifested his disapprobation of it, if it were unlawful, when so fair occasion was given him to express his mind concerning it: To this I would say,

1. The prophets spake under the immediate direction of heaven; they were to deliver God's messages, and were only the agents to utter his words. In this whole affair of Naaman he acted in his character of a prophet, and Naaman is now addressing him as such, and God was not pleased to put any reply into his mouth.

2. God herein dealt with Naaman, as he commonly does with such hypocrites that pretend to be his servants, but are joined to idols. Hos. iv. 17. " Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." Matth. xv. 14. "Let them alone, they be blind leaders of the blind." It was just so with Naaman as it was with the elders of Israel in Chaldea, they pretend to worship the God of Israel alone, but yet living among idolaters, and in subjection to them, they thought they might comply with the people of the land, who now were their masters, in some of their idolatrous customs, seeing they must render themselves very obnoxious by refusing, and they came to the prophet Ezekiel to inquire of him something concerning this affair; but God replies by the prophet, Ezek. xiv. 3, "Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face, should I be inquired of at all by them?" Again, chap. xx. 1, certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the Lord, and sat before me. Ver. 3, "Thus saith the Lord God, Are ye come to inquire of me? as I live, saith the Lord, I will not be inquired of by you," with ver. 31. "For when ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day; and shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? as I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you." That what was the especial reason of God's treating them with such manifestations of abhorrence, and refusing any intercourse with them, was, that they joined idolatry with a profession of his name under a pretence of worshipping him, or had a disposition so to do, is manifest by ver. 39, "As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, Go ye, serve every one his idols, and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto me but pollute ye my holy name no more with your gifts and your idols." And that the thing that was in their mind about which they came to Eze

kiel to inquire, was, whether they might not comply with the people they dwelt among in some of their idolatrous customs, though they professed in heart to serve the true God only, is plain from ver. 32. "And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone."

3. Though Elisha made no reply to what Naaman had said of bowing in the house of Rimmon, and so did not directly declare his dislike of it, yet his manner of treating Naaman on this occasion (though no other than friendly) if duly weighed, and rationally reflected upon by Naaman, would sufficiently show him the prophet's disapprobation of it, and in a manner tending more to convince and affect him than if he had directly forbid it. Naaman made a proposal to Elisha of taking two mules' burthen of earth of the land of Canaan (as though he highly valued the very dust of that land) to build an altar to Elisha's God, doubtless expecting that Elisha would show himself much pleased with it, and desires to have this earth as given and consecrated by Elisha. But Elisha does not grant his request, he takes no notice of it, intimating that he looked on his pretences not worthy of any regard, and immediately, without saying one word to what he had said, sends him away, and takes his leave of him, as not thinking it worth his while to enter into any conversation with him about such a mongrel worship as he proposed, nor desiring any unnecessary communion with such an idolator.

[170] 2 Kings vi. 6. "And he cut down a stick and cast it in thither, and the iron did swim." The iron that sunk in the water represents the soul of man that is like iron, exceeding heavy with sin and guilt, and prone to sink down into destruction, and be overwhelmed with misery, which is often compared to deep waters. The stick of wood that was cast in, represents Christ, that was of a contrary nature, light, and tended not to sink, but to ascend in the water and swim; as Christ's being of a divine and perfectly holy nature, though he might be plunged into affliction and misery and death, yet he naturally tended to ascend out of it, it was impossible he should be holden of it. Christ was plunged into wo and misery, and the death that he had deserved for ourselves to bring us out of it. The stick when that rose brought up the iron with it; So Christ when he rose brings up believers with him; they are risen with Christ, that they may walk in newness of life. Christ is the first fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's; he rose again for our justification, and hath thereby begotten us again to a lively hope. [222] 2 Chron. xxii. 1, 2. "So Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, reigned; forty and two years old was Ahaziah

when he began to reign." Here a great difficulty arises, for whereas Joram was thirty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem, and so he died when he was forty years old; and immediately the inhabitants of Jerusalem set Ahaziah upon the throne, who was his youngest son, yet this Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he began to reign, and so he will prove to be two years older than his father.

Answer. The book of Chronicles doth not mean in this place that Ahaziah was so old when he began to reign, for the book of Kings tells us plainly that he was twenty-two at that time, so that those forty-two years have reference to another thing, particularly to the house of Omri, and not the age of Ahaziah, for if we count from the beginning of the reign of Omri, we shall find that Ahaziah entered into his reign in the two and fortieth year from thence. The original words therefore are not to be translated as we render them. Ahaziah was two and forty years old, but Ahaziah was the son of the two and forty years, and this was anciently observed in that history among the Jews, called Soder Olam, or the order of the world. Now the reason why his reign is dated differently from all the rest of the kings of Judah, is because he did according to all the wickedness of the house of Omri, for Athaliah his mother was Ahab's daughter, and she both perverted her husband Joram, and brought up this her son, Ahaziab, in all the idolatry of that wicked house, and therefore Ahaziah is not thought fit to be reckoned by the line of the kings of Judah, (and of the house of David, and the ancestors of Christ,) but by the house of Omri and Ahab. Thus a particular mark is set upon Joram by the evangelist Matthew, who leaves out the three succeeding generations, viz. Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, and mentions Uzziah as the next. Here the three descents are omitted, according to what the Psalmist saith, Ps. xxxvii. 28, "The seed of the wicked shall be cut off." See the letter y which is the last letter of yy, the seed, and of y, the wicked. But out of that acrostical and alphabetical Psalm, in that very place, Dr. Lightfoot, vol. 1, p. 417, saith that this omission is most divinely done from the threatening of the second commandment, "Thou shalt not commit idolatry, for I will visit the sins of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generation." It is the manner of scripture very often to leave out men's names from certain stories and records, to show a distaste at some evil in them. Thus all Cain's posterity is blotted out of the book of Chronicles, as it was out of the world by the flood. So Simeon is omitted in Moses's blessings, Deut. xxxiii. for his cruelty at Shechem, and to Joseph. So Dan and Ephraim, at the sealing of the Lord's people, Rev. chap. vii. because of idolatry, which began in the tribe of Dan. Judg. xviii. (and afterwards had its principal seat in the tribe of Ephraim.) So Joab,

from among David's worthies, 2 Sam. xxiii. because of his bloodiness to Abner and Amasa. And such another close intimation of God's displeasure at the wickedness of Joram, is to be seen, 2 Chron. xxii. 1, 2, where the reign of his son Ahaziah, is not dated according to the custom and manner of the other kings of Judah, but by the style of the continuance of the house of Omri.

And Abaziah alone, among all the kings of Israel, might be reckoned in this manner, because in his time the whole house of Ahab was cut off by Jehu, after the battle at the field of Naboth, the Jezreelite, where Joram, the last king of Israel, of the house of Ahab, or Omri, was slain, and Ahaziah was slain with him, and two and forty of his brethren perished with the house of Ahab. (This I suppose is from Bedford.) It is not unusual in scripture to mention a number of years as a certain date, without expressing the epocha. So in Ezek. i. 1, and viii. 1, xx. 1, xxiv. 1, xxvi. 1, xxix. 1, xxxi. 1, xxxii. 1. Chap. xxix. 17, xxx. 20. That Hebrew phrase, The son of (so many) years does not always signify the person's being so old. As for instance, xiii. 1, Saul reigned one year; in the original it is, Saul was the son of one year. It may be noted further, that the scriptures, in dating kings' reigns, do not always make the person's birth that epoch from whence the date is taken, as concerning Absalom, 2 Sam. xv. 7. See also Notes on 2 Kings xxiv. S.

[278] 2 Chron. xxv. 9. "And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And the man of God answered, The Lord is able to give thee much more than this." Amaziah seemed to look upon it an hard thing to part with so great a sum. But the words that the prophet spake to him were not vain words. God plentifully rewarded Amaziah for obeying God's command in this particular, for God gave him success against his enemies, that he was going to war with, and he obtained a victory over the children of Edom, as in verses 11, 12, so that he obtained the same end without the help of the army of Israel that he aimed at, by paying the one hundred talents to hire their help, and therefore lost nothing by not taking them with him; and probably Amaziah was much more than paid for his hundred talents by the spoils of his enemies. But yet this was not all that God did in reward for his obeying his command by the prophet, for though he carried himself very wickedly after this, so as to bring God's judg ments on himself during his life, yet God seems to have remembered what he had done in his son Uzziah's days; and Amaziah's success in this very expedition against the Edomites was the occasion of vastly enriching his son Üzziah. For that which seems in times past to have been the principal source of the wealth of the

kings of Judah, was the trade that they had by the Red sea to Ophir for gold, which was carried on from two seaport towns upon the Red sea, viz. Elath, and Ezion-geber, which places were in the land of Edom, as appears by 1 Kings ix. 26, 27. "And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Elath, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom;" and by means of this trade, very much it was in all probability that Solomon so enriched the country in his time, so as to make silver as plenty as stones there. The principal sea-port, that was made use of until Jehoshaphat's time, was Ezion-geber; but Jehoshaphat having there left his fleet that he had prepared to send from thence to Ophir, his ships being broken to pieces on the rocks there, as 1 Kings xxii. 48, they seem after that to have made use of Elath instead of Ezion-geber, as being a safer harbour. The kings of Judah continued in the possession of this trade to Ophir, as long as they continued in the possession of the land of Edom, where those sea-ports were, which was until the days of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat; but in his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made a king over themselves, as 2 Kings viii. 20. And so the kings of Judah from that time lost Elath and their trade to Ophir, until the days of Amaziah, who conquered them, and brought them into subjection again in that expedition spoken of in the context, to assist in which he had given the one hundred talents to the army of Israel. But God gave him such success without this hired army, that he brought the country under, and so recovered Elath; and his son Uzziah rebuilt it, and so renewed the trade to Ophir from thence, as in the next chapter, verses 1, 2. "Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father, Amaziah. He built Elath, and restored it to Judah, and by this means he became an exceeding wealthy prince, and filled the land with riches; and therefore Isaiah, who in the beginning of his prophecy, prophecied in the days of Uzziah, says, Isai. ii. 7, "The land also is full of silver, and there is no end of their treasures.'

"This king lost one hundred talents by his obedience, and we find just that sum given to his grandson, Jotham, as a present, chap. xxvii. 5. Then the principal was repaid, and for interest, ten thousand measures of wheat, and as many of barley." Henry.

[132] Nehem. ix. 14. "And madest known unto them the holy Sabbath." It seems that before they had lost the Sabbath, that is, they had lost the beginning and ending of the week, reckoning from the creation, until God made it known to them, upon occasion of their being brought out of Egypt