men of Jerusalem knew what was passing at Lachish, they might well be filled with horror. The very tablet representing the siege is in the British Museum, showing Sennacherib seated on his throne, with a canopy over his head, watching some prisoners being flayed alive, while one of the gates is being broken through, and the inhabitants are hurling flaming torches on the heads of the assailants.

Meantime, Hezekiah knelt in sackcloth before God in the Temple, and sent Eliakim and Shebna to inquire of Isaiah, beseeching him to lift up his prayer for “the remnant that were left" -meaning the kingdom of Judah, the remnant of David's once mighty realm, and even that overrun by the enemy all except the one city. Yet as there had been a direct defiance of God himself, Hezekiah felt a strong assurance that His power would be shown, and this trust was confirmed by the prophet. God inspired him with a brief answer. Hezekiah need not be afraid; God would send a spirit of terror, a panic upon him (it does not mean the blast that destroyed his army); he would hear a report, and would return to his own land, where he would fall by the sword. Lachish having fallen, Sennacherib began to besiege Libnah, a town about four miles nearer Jerusalem, and was preparing another advance, but there the rumour reached him that Tirhakah of Ethiopia, the eldest son of So, and no doubt joined with him in his dominion, was taking up arms, and the tidings of his intended attack made Sennacherib hasten away to prepare to meet him, but he seems to have been much angered by the silence of Hezekiah and his counsellors; and that they might not hope to escape, he wrote a letter in the same boastful strain as that Rabshakeh had spoken: "Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee," he says, and appeals to the example of the ruined cities which had not been saved by their gods. Gozan was in Media; it was a place made desolate, and filled up by the captive Israelites. Haran, named after Abraham's brother, was in Mesopotamia; so probably was Rezeph, and the children of Eden that were in Thelasar seem to have been an Arab tribe on the Assyrian border. And then he asks, "Where is the King of Hamath," &c., as if he were pointing to his palace walls, where he could see himself in his chariot trampling on all these unfortunate kings, whose

fate he thought would soon be Hezekiah's. Now Hezekiah knew that all this danger and distress was brought on him and his people by the wickedness of his father, and all the sins that he was struggling to root out. So he received the letter with alarm, repentance, and intense submission to his God. He carried it to the Temple, and kneeling, as we may suppose, on the royal platform in the court, he spread it before the Lord, and poured forth a beautiful prayer. "God, who dwellest between the Cherubims,” he says, thinking of the Cherubim over the mercy-seat, and perhaps of Isaiah's vision of the true mercy-seat in heaven. There Hezekiah contrasts the power of the God of the whole universe with the utter nothingness of the idols over which the Assyrian made his boast. Hezekiah rose in this far above most even of his countrymen. There were many, both of them and their neighbours, who thought each nation had gods peculiar to itself, and that these gods fought together in behalf of their people, and that one conquered the other. Thus they could believe JEHOVAH to be the God of Israel, but could not believe that there was no other god at all, as Hezekiah so clearly owns. His fervour of prayer after he had done all a good king could do for his defence, and his steady resolution to turn to no help not appointed by God, is one of our greatest lessons. In all our dangers and distresses, let us go up to the house of God, and spread our trouble before him.

LESSON LXXVII.

THE ANSWER TO SENNACHERI B.

B.C. 713.—2 KINGS xix. 20-34.

Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.

This is the word that the Lord hath spoken concerning him; The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.

Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.

By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains,

to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel.

I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places.

Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps.

Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the house tops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.

But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me.

*

Because thy rage against me and thy tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.

And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.

For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.

Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.

By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the LORD.

For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.

COMMENT. The answer was not long in coming from Isaiah. Personifying Jerusalem as a virgin, he-speaking by inspiration of God-describes her as laughing to scorn the empty threats of her foe. For who was it whom Sennacherib had defied but the Holy One of Israel. Then Sennacherib's boast of his own power is repeated. These are almost the words of an inscription dug up at Khorsabad, one of the buried palaces of this very prince. There he says, "I have laid open thick and vast forests without number, and have removed their glades. I have traversed winding valleys in the deserts where desolation abides, and in my passage I have dug deep wells." His multitudinous chariots had indeed brought the Assyrian to the hills of Carmel and Lebanon. Indeed the growth of Cedars, that growth which had been nourished for the * Or, ring.

Temple's sake, never recovered the desolation of the wanton Assyrian. He had crossed the desert, digging wells. Rivers were as nothing to him-his men are seen on the slabs, crossing them on inflated skins, or digging channels to turn them from their course. It was as if the Assyrian dried them up with his foot. So far go Sennacherib's words. Then comes the Lord's reply. Did not Sennacherib know that this was the Lord's own intention? It was the very object for which Sennacherib had been sent into the world. God required that these towns should be made into heaps of ruins, and the work had been done. It must have told all the more on the Jews because Isaiah had uttered many prophecies against the places that the Assyrians had overrun. For that very reason, that it was God's will that they should be ruined, the inhabitants of those places were too weak to fight against him, like mere grass growing on the shallow soil the house-top afforded. The king had conquered not by his strength, but their weakness. His going out and coming in were alike in the power of the God he had defied: Like a bull with a ring in his nose held by a driver, or a horse with the bit in his mouth, he was now going to be turned round and sent back again, entirely helpless in the hands of the God of all the earth.

Then Hezekiah is addressed, and a sign is granted to him and his people, and a sign that would require some faith. Sabbath years, those seventh years of leaving the land fallow, seem always to have been a trial to them, and they were now to keep one. Indeed, just now, when they were close shut up in Jerusalem, no husbandry was possible, but for another year afterwards the land should have a Sabbath, and they might trust to God to make it produce enough to feed them. And in the third they should freely sow, reap, and tend their vines. It was a test of obedience, and further, a token for the future. The few survivors of the house of Judah should grow and flourish, just as the remains of former crops would do under God's bounteous hand, and as finally the few faithful Jews who followed the Saviour would bear the glorious fruit of the Gentile world. And then more explicitly came the promise that Jerusalem should not even suffer the terror of a siege. Not one arrow should be shot against it. No bank-namely, mound of earth, such as the Assyrians are seen raising in their monuments

whence to throw their darts-no serried rank should come against the walls of warriors with their shields locked together above their heads to keep off the showers of stones from above. No. Sennacherib should go home the way he came. "For I will defend this city for my own sake, and for my servant David's sake," saith God. And so doth He still defend such as put their whole trust in Him.

LESSON LXXVIII.

NAHUM'S PROPHECY AGAINST NINEVEH.

P.C. 713.-SELECTIONS FROM NAHUM.

Another prophet's voice joined that of Isaiah in foretelling-not so much the present defeat of Sennacherib, but the future fall of Nineveh-Nahum the Elkoshite, apparently so called from a little village in Galilee, and possibly an Israelite captive in Assyria, uttered a prophecy, the date of which is much questioned, but which the wisest judges have shown to have been almost certainly the encouragement of the faithful during this terrible stress of anxiety.

The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth;

The LORD revengeth and is furious;

The LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries,

And he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power,

And will not at all acquit the wicked:

The LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm,

And the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry,

And drieth up all the rivers :

Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth.

The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt,

And the earth is burned at his presence,

Yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.

Who can stand before his indignation?

And who can abide in the fierceness of his anger?

His fury is poured out like fire,

And the rocks are thrown down by him.

The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble;