Antiquities Book 9, Chapter 14
How Shalmaneser Took Samaria By Force And How He Transplanted The Ten Tribes Into Media, And Brought The Nation Of The Cutheans Into Their Country [In Their Room].
1. When Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, had it told him, that [Hoshea]
the king of Israel had sent privately to So, the king of Egypt, desiring
his assistance against him, he was very angry, and made an expedition
against Samaria, in the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea; but when he
was not admitted [into the city] by the king, 24 he besieged Samaria
three years, and took it by force in the ninth year of the reign of
Hoshea, and in the seventh year of Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem, and
quite demolished the government of the Israelites, and transplanted all
the people into Media and Persia among whom he took king Hoshea alive;
and when he had removed these people out of this their land he
transplanted other nations out of Cuthah, a place so called, [for there
is [still] a river of that name in Persia,] into Samaria, and into the
country of the Israelites. So the ten tribes of the Israelites were
removed out of Judea nine hundred and forty-seven years after their
forefathers were come out of the land of Egypt, and possessed themselves
of the country, but eight hundred years after Joshua had been their
leader, and, as I have already observed, two hundred and forty years,
seven months, and seven days after they had revolted from Rehoboam, the
grandson of David, and had given the kingdom to Jeroboam. And such a
conclusion overtook the Israelites, when they had transgressed the laws,
and would not hearken to the prophets, who foretold that this calamity
would come upon them, if they would not leave off their evil doings.
What gave birth to these evil doings, was that sedition which they
raised against Rehoboam, the grandson of David, when they set up
Jeroboam his servant to be their king, when, by sinning against God, and
bringing them to imitate his bad example, made God to be their enemy,
while Jeroboam underwent that punishment which he justly deserved.
2. And now the king of Assyria invaded all Syria and Phoenicia in a
hostile manner. The name of this king is also set down in the archives
of Tyre, for he made an expedition against Tyre in the reign of Eluleus;
and Menander attests to it, who, when he wrote his Chronology, and
translated the archives of Tyre into the Greek language, gives us the
following history: "One whose name was Eluleus reigned thirty-six years;
this king, upon the revolt of the Citteans, sailed to them, and reduced
them again to a submission. Against these did the king of Assyria send
an army, and in a hostile manner overrun all Phoenicia, but soon made
peace with them all, and returned back; but Sidon, and Ace, and
Palsetyrus revolted; and many other cities there were which delivered
themselves up to the king of Assyria. Accordingly, when the Tyrians
would not submit to him, the king returned, and fell upon them again,
while the Phoenicians had furnished him with threescore ships, and eight
hundred men to row them; and when the Tyrians had come upon them in
twelve ships, and the enemy's ships were dispersed, they took five
hundred men prisoners, and the reputation of all the citizens of Tyre
was thereby increased; but the king of Assyria returned, and placed
guards at their rivers and aqueducts, who should hinder the Tyrians from
drawing water. This continued for five years; and still the Tyrians bore
the siege, and drank of the water they had out of the wells they dug."
And this is what is written in the Tyrian archives concerning
Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria.
3. But now the Cutheans, who removed into Samaria, [for that is the name
they have been called by to this time, because they were brought out of
the country called Cuthah, which is a country of Persia, and there is a
river of the same name in it,] each of them, according to their nations,
which were in number five, brought their own gods into Samaria, and by
worshipping them, as was the custom of their own countries, they
provoked Almighty God to be angry and displeased at them, for a plague
seized upon them, by which they were destroyed; and when they found no
cure for their miseries, they learned by the oracle that they ought to
worship Almighty God, as the method for their deliverance. So they sent
ambassadors to the king of Assyria, and desired him to send them some of
those priests of the Israelites whom he had taken captive. And when he
thereupon sent them, and the people were by them taught the laws, and
the holy worship of God, they worshipped him in a respectful manner, and
the plague ceased immediately; and indeed they continue to make use of
the very same customs to this very time, and are called in the Hebrew
tongue Cutlans, but in the Greek tongue Samaritans. And when they see
the Jews in prosperity, they pretend that they are changed, and allied
to them, and call them kinsmen, as though they were derived from Joseph,
and had by that means an original alliance with them; but when they see
them falling into a low condition, they say they are no way related to
them, and that the Jews have no right to expect any kindness or marks of
kindred from them, but they declare that they are sojourners, that come
from other countries. But of these we shall have a more seasonable
opportunity to discourse hereafter.
FOOTNOTES
1 (return) [ These judges constituted by Jehoshaphat were a kind of
Jerusalem Sanhedrim, out of the priests, the Levites, and the principal
of the people, both here and 2 Chronicles 19:8; much like the old
Christian judicatures of the bishop, the presbyters, the deacons, and
the people.]
2 (return) [ Concerning this precious balsam, see the note on Atiq. B.
VIII. ch. 6. sect. 6.]
3 (return) [ What are here Pontus and Thrace, as the places whither
Jehoshaphat's fleet sailed, are in our other copies Ophir and Tarshish,
and the place whence it sailed is in them Eziongeber, which lay on the
Red Sea, whence it was impossible for any ships to sail to Pontus or
Thrace; so that Josephus's copy differed from our other copies, as is
further plain from his own words, which render what we read, that "the
ships were broken at Eziongeber, from their unwieldy greatness." But so
far we may conclude, that Josephus thought one Ophir to be some where in
the Mediterranean, and not in the South Sea, though perhaps there might
be another Ophir in that South Sea also, and that fleets might then sail
both from Phoenicia and from the Red Sea to fetch the gold of Ophir.]
4 (return) [ This god of flies seems to have been so called, as was the
like god among the Greeks, from his supposed power over flies, in
driving them away from the flesh of their sacrifices, which otherwise
would have been very troublesome to them.]
5 (return) [ It is commonly esteemed a very cruel action of Elijah, when
he called for fire from heaven, and consumed no fewer than two captains
and a hundred soldiers, and this for no other crime than obeying the
orders of their king, in attempting to seize him; and it is owned by our
Savior, that it was an instance of greater severity than the spirit of
the New Testament allows, Luke 9:54. But then we must consider that it
is not unlikely that these captains and soldiers believed that they were
sent to fetch the prophet, that he might be put to death for foretelling
the death of the king, and this while they knew him to be the prophet of
the true God, the supreme King of Israel, [for they were still under the
theocracy,] which was no less than impiety, rebellion, and treason, in
the highest degree: nor would the command of a subaltern, or inferior
captain, contradicting the commands of the general, when the captain and
the soldiers both knew it to be so, as I suppose, justify or excuse such
gross rebellion and disobedience in soldiers at this day. Accordingly,
when Saul commanded his guards to slay Ahimelech and the priests at Nob,
they knew it to be an unlawful command, and would not obey it, 1 Samuel
22:17. From which cases both officers and soldiers may learn, that the
commands of their leaders or kings cannot justify or excuse them in
doing what is wicked in the sight of God, or in fighting in an unjust
cause, when they know it so to be.]
6 (return) [ This practice of cutting down, or plucking up by the roots,
the fruit trees was forbidden, even in ordinary wars, by the law of
Moses, Deuteronomy 20:19, 20, and only allowed by God in this particular
case, when the Moabites were to be punished and cut off in an
extraordinary manner for their wickedness See Jeremiah 48:11-13, and
many the like prophecies against them. Nothing could therefore justify
this practice but a particular commission from God by his prophet, as in
the present case, which was ever a sufficient warrant for breaking any
such ritual or ceremonial law whatsoever.]
7 (return) [ That this woman who cried to Elisha, and who in our Bible
is styled "the wife of one of the sons of the prophets," 2 Kings 4:1,
was no other than the widow of Obadiah, the good steward of Ahab, is
confirmed by the Chaldee paraphrast, and by the Rabbins and others. Nor
is that unlikely which Josephus here adds, that these debts were
contracted by her husband for the support of those "hundred of the
Lord's prophets, whom he maintained by fifty in a cave," in the days of
Ahab and Jezebel, 1 Kings 18:4; which circumstance rendered it highly
fit that the prophet Elisha should provide her a remedy, and enable her
to redeem herself and her sons from the fear of that slavery which
insolvent debtors were liable to by the law of Moses, Leviticus 25:39;
Matthew 18:25; which he did accordingly, with God's help, at the expense
of a miracle.]
8 (return) [ Dr. Hudson, with very good reason, suspects that there is
no small defect in our present copies of Josephus, just before the
beginning of this section, and that chiefly as to that distinct account
which he had given us reason to expect in the first section, and to
which he seems to refer, ch. 8. sect. 6. concerning the glorious
miracles which Elisha wrought, which indeed in our Bibles are not a few,
2 Kings 6-9., but of which we have several omitted in Josephus's present
copies. One of those histories, omitted at present, was evidently in his
Bible, I mean that of the curing of Nanman's leprosy, 2 Kings 5.; for he
plainly alludes to it, B. III. ch. 11. sect. 4, where he observes, that
"there were lepers in many nations who yet have been in honor, and not
only free from reproach and avoidance, but who have been great captains
of armies, and been intrusted with high offices in the commonwealth, and
have had the privilege of entering into holy places and temples." But
what makes me most regret the want of that history in our present copies
of Josephus is this, that we have here, as it is commonly understood,
one of the greatest difficulties in all the Bible, that in 2 Kings 5:18,
19, where Naaman, after he had been miraculously cured by a prophet of
the true God, and had thereupon promised [ver. 17: that "he would
henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
but unto the Lord," adds, "In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant,
that when my master goeth into the house of Rimnu to worship there, and
he leaneth on my hands, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmort; when I
bow down myself in the house of Rimmort, the Lord pardon thy servant in
this thing. And Elisha said, Go in peace." This looks like a prophet's
permission for being partaker in idolatry itself, out of compliance with
an idolatrous court.]
9 (return) [ Upon occasion of this stratagem of Elisha, in Josephus, we
may take notice, that although Josephus was one of the greatest lovers
of truth in the world, yet in a just war he seems to have had no manner
of scruple upon him by all such stratagems possible to deceive public
enemies. See this Josephus's account of Jeremiah's imposition on the
great men of the Jews in somewhat like case, Antiq. B. X. ch. 7. sect.
6; 2 Samuel 16:16, &c.]
10 (return) [ This son of a murderer was Joram, the son of Ahab, which
Ahab slew, or permitted his wife Jezebel to slay, the Lord's prophets,
and Naboth, 1 Kings 18:4; 21:19; and he is here called by this name, I
suppose, because he had now also himself sent an officer to murder him;
yet is Josephus's account of Joram's coming himself at last as repenting
of his intended cruelty, much more probable than that in our copies, 2
Kings 6:33, which rather implies the contrary.]
11 (return) [ This law of the Jews, for the exclusion of lepers out of
the camp in the wilderness, and out of the cities in Judea, is a known
one, Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 5:14.]
12 (return) [ Since Elijah did not live to anoint Hazael king of Syria
himself, as he was empowered to do, 1 Kings 19:15, it was most probably
now done, in his name, by his servant and successor Elisha. Nor does it
seem to me otherwise but that Benhadad immediately recovered of his
disease, as the prophet foretold; and that Hazael, upon his being
anointed to succeed him though he ought to have staid till he died by
the course of nature, or some other way of Divine punishment, as did
David for many years in the like case, was too impatient, and the very
next day smothered or strangled him, in order to come directly to the
succession.]
13 (return) [ What Mr. Le Clerc pretends here, that it is more probable
that Hazael and his son were worshipped by the Syrians and people of
Damascus till the days of Josephus, than Benhadad and Hazael, because
under Benhadad they had greatly suffered, and because it is almost
incredible that both a king and that king's murderer should be
worshipped by the same Syrians, is of little force against those
records, out of which Josephus drew this history, especially when it is
likely that they thought Benhadad died of the distemper he labored
under, and not by Hazael's treachery. Besides, the reason that Josephus
gives for this adoration, that these two kings had been great
benefactors to the inhabitants of Damascus, and had built them temples,
is too remote from the political suspicions of Le Clerc; nor ought such
weak suspicions to be deemed of any force against authentic testimonies
of antiquity.]
14 (return) [ This epistle, in some copies of Josephus, is said to come
to Jotare from Elijah, with this addition," for he was yet upon earth,"
which could not be true of Elijah, who, as all agree, was gone from the
earth about four years before, and could only be true of Elisha; nor
perhaps is there any more mystery here, than that the name of Elijah has
very anciently crept into the text instead of Elisha, by the copiers,
there being nothing in any copy of that epistle peculiar to Elijah.]
15 (return) [ Spanheim here notes, that this putting off men's garments,
and strewing them under a king, was an Eastern custom, which he had
elsewhere explained.]
16 (return) [ Our copies say that this "driving of the chariots was like
the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously," 2
Kings 9:20; whereas Josephus's copy, as he understood it, was this,
that, on the contrary, Jehu marched slowly, and in good order. Nor can
it be denied, that since there was interval enough for king Joram to
send out two horsemen, one after another, to Jehu, and at length to go
out with king Ahaziah to meet him, and all this after he was come within
sight of the watchman, and before he was come to Jezreel, the
probability is greatly on the side of Josephus's copy or
interpretation.]
17 (return) [ This character of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, that "he was
a good man, and in his disposition not at all like to his father," seems
a direct contradiction to our ordinary copies, which say [2 Kings 13:11]
that "he did evil in the sight of the Lord; and that he departed not
from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin:
he walked therein." Which copies are here the truest it is hard
positively to determine. If Josephus's be true, this Joash is the single
instance of a good king over the ten tribes; if the other be true, we
have not one such example. The account that follows, in all copies, of
Elisha the prophet's concern for him, and his concern for Elisha,
greatly favors Josephus's copies, and supposes this king to have been
then a good man, and no idolater, with whom God's prophets used not to
be so familiar. Upon the whole, since it appears, even by Josephus's own
account, that Amaziah, the good king of Judah, while he was a good king,
was forbidden to make use of the hundred thousand auxiliaries he had
hired of this Joash, the king of Israel, as if he and they were then
idolaters, 2 Chronicles 25:6-9, it is most likely that these different
characters of Joash suited the different parts of his reign, and that,
according to our common copies, he was at first a wicked king, and
afterwards was reclaimed, and became a good one, according to Josephus.]
18 (return) [ What I have above noted concerning Jehoash, seems to me to
have been true also concerning his son Jeroboam II., viz. that although
he began wickedly, as Josephus agrees with our other copies, and, as he
adds, "was the cause of a vast number of misfortunes to the Israelites"
in those his first years, [the particulars of which are unhappily
wanting both in Josephus and in all our copies,] so does it seem to me
that he was afterwards reclaimed, and became a good king, and so was
encouraged by the prophet Jonah, and had great successes afterward, when
"God had saved the Israelites by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of
Joash," 2 Kings 14:27; which encouragement by Jonah, and great
successes, are equally observable in Josephus, and in the other copies.]
19 (return) [ When Jonah is said in our Bibles to have gone to Tarshish,
Jonah 1:3, Josephus understood it that he went to Tarsus in Cilicia, or
to the Mediterranean Sea, upon which Tarsus lay; so that he does not
appear to have read the text, 1 Kings 22:48, as our copies do, that
ships of Tarshish could lie at Ezion-geber, upon the Red Sea. But as to
Josephus's assertion, that Jonah's fish was carried by the strength of
the current, upon a nean, it is by no means an improbable determination
in Josephus.]
20 (return) [ This ancient piece of religion, of supposing there was
great sin where there was great misery, and of casting lots to discover
great sinners, not only among the Israelites, but among these heathen
mariners, seems a remarkable remains of the ancient tradition which
prevailed of old over all mankind, that Providence used to interpose
visibly in all human affairs, and storm, as far as the Euxine Sea, it is
no way impossible; and since the storm might have driven the ship, while
Jonah was in it never to bring, or at least not long to continue,
notorious judge, near to that Euxine Sea, and since in three more days,
while but for notorious sins, which the most ancient Book of he was in
the fish's belly, that current might bring him to the Job shows to have
been the state of mankind for about the Assyrian coast, and since withal
that coast could bring him former three thousand years of the world,
till the days of Job nearer to Nineveh than could any coast of the
Mediterranian and Moses.]
21 (return) [ This account of an earthquake at Jerusalem at the very
same time when Uzziah usurped the priest's office, and went into the
sanctuary to burn incense, and of the consequences of the earthquake, is
entirely wanting in our other copies, though it be exceeding like to a
prophecy of Jeremiah, now in Zechariah 14:4, 5; in which prophecy
mention is made of "fleeing from that earthquake, as they fled from this
earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah;" so that there seems to
have been some considerable resemblance between these historical and
prophetical earthquakes.]
22 (return) [ Dr. Wall, in his critical notes on 2 Kings 15:20,
observes, "that when this Menahem is said to have exacted the money of
Israel of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of
silver, to give Pul, the king of Assyria, a thousand talents, this is
the first public money raised by any [Israelite] king by tax on the
people; that they used before to raise it out of the treasures of the
house of the Lord, or of their own house; that it was a poll-money on
the rich men, [and them only,] to raise oe353,000, or, as others count a
talent, oe400,000, at the rate of oe6 or oe7 per head; and that God
commanded, by Ezekiel, ch. 45:8; 46:18, that no such thing should be
done [at the Jews' restoration], but the king should have land of his
own."]
23 (return) [ This passage is taken out of the prophet Nahum, ch. 2:8-
13, and is the principal, or rather the only, one that is given us
almost verbatim, but a little abridged, in all Josephus's known
writings: by which quotation we learn what he himself always asserts,
viz. that he made use of the Hebrew original and not of the Greek
version]; as also we learn, that his Hebrew copy considerably differed
from ours. See all three texts particularly set down and compared
together in the Essay on the Old Testament, page 187.]
24 (return) [ This siege of Samaria, though not given a particular
account of, either in our Hebrew or Greek Bibles, or in Josephus, was so
very long, no less than three years, that it was no way improbable but
that parents, and particularly mothers, might therein be reduced to eat
their own children, as the law of Moses had threatened upon their
disobedience, Leviticus 26;29; Deuteronomy 28:53-57; and as was
accomplished in the other shorter sieges of both the capital cities,
Jerusalem and Samaria; the former mentioned Jeremiah 19:9; Antiq. B. IX.
ch. 4. sect. 4, and the latter, 2 Kings 6:26-29.]
the king of Israel had sent privately to So, the king of Egypt, desiring
his assistance against him, he was very angry, and made an expedition
against Samaria, in the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea; but when he
was not admitted [into the city] by the king, 24 he besieged Samaria
three years, and took it by force in the ninth year of the reign of
Hoshea, and in the seventh year of Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem, and
quite demolished the government of the Israelites, and transplanted all
the people into Media and Persia among whom he took king Hoshea alive;
and when he had removed these people out of this their land he
transplanted other nations out of Cuthah, a place so called, [for there
is [still] a river of that name in Persia,] into Samaria, and into the
country of the Israelites. So the ten tribes of the Israelites were
removed out of Judea nine hundred and forty-seven years after their
forefathers were come out of the land of Egypt, and possessed themselves
of the country, but eight hundred years after Joshua had been their
leader, and, as I have already observed, two hundred and forty years,
seven months, and seven days after they had revolted from Rehoboam, the
grandson of David, and had given the kingdom to Jeroboam. And such a
conclusion overtook the Israelites, when they had transgressed the laws,
and would not hearken to the prophets, who foretold that this calamity
would come upon them, if they would not leave off their evil doings.
What gave birth to these evil doings, was that sedition which they
raised against Rehoboam, the grandson of David, when they set up
Jeroboam his servant to be their king, when, by sinning against God, and
bringing them to imitate his bad example, made God to be their enemy,
while Jeroboam underwent that punishment which he justly deserved.
2. And now the king of Assyria invaded all Syria and Phoenicia in a
hostile manner. The name of this king is also set down in the archives
of Tyre, for he made an expedition against Tyre in the reign of Eluleus;
and Menander attests to it, who, when he wrote his Chronology, and
translated the archives of Tyre into the Greek language, gives us the
following history: "One whose name was Eluleus reigned thirty-six years;
this king, upon the revolt of the Citteans, sailed to them, and reduced
them again to a submission. Against these did the king of Assyria send
an army, and in a hostile manner overrun all Phoenicia, but soon made
peace with them all, and returned back; but Sidon, and Ace, and
Palsetyrus revolted; and many other cities there were which delivered
themselves up to the king of Assyria. Accordingly, when the Tyrians
would not submit to him, the king returned, and fell upon them again,
while the Phoenicians had furnished him with threescore ships, and eight
hundred men to row them; and when the Tyrians had come upon them in
twelve ships, and the enemy's ships were dispersed, they took five
hundred men prisoners, and the reputation of all the citizens of Tyre
was thereby increased; but the king of Assyria returned, and placed
guards at their rivers and aqueducts, who should hinder the Tyrians from
drawing water. This continued for five years; and still the Tyrians bore
the siege, and drank of the water they had out of the wells they dug."
And this is what is written in the Tyrian archives concerning
Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria.
3. But now the Cutheans, who removed into Samaria, [for that is the name
they have been called by to this time, because they were brought out of
the country called Cuthah, which is a country of Persia, and there is a
river of the same name in it,] each of them, according to their nations,
which were in number five, brought their own gods into Samaria, and by
worshipping them, as was the custom of their own countries, they
provoked Almighty God to be angry and displeased at them, for a plague
seized upon them, by which they were destroyed; and when they found no
cure for their miseries, they learned by the oracle that they ought to
worship Almighty God, as the method for their deliverance. So they sent
ambassadors to the king of Assyria, and desired him to send them some of
those priests of the Israelites whom he had taken captive. And when he
thereupon sent them, and the people were by them taught the laws, and
the holy worship of God, they worshipped him in a respectful manner, and
the plague ceased immediately; and indeed they continue to make use of
the very same customs to this very time, and are called in the Hebrew
tongue Cutlans, but in the Greek tongue Samaritans. And when they see
the Jews in prosperity, they pretend that they are changed, and allied
to them, and call them kinsmen, as though they were derived from Joseph,
and had by that means an original alliance with them; but when they see
them falling into a low condition, they say they are no way related to
them, and that the Jews have no right to expect any kindness or marks of
kindred from them, but they declare that they are sojourners, that come
from other countries. But of these we shall have a more seasonable
opportunity to discourse hereafter.
FOOTNOTES
1 (return) [ These judges constituted by Jehoshaphat were a kind of
Jerusalem Sanhedrim, out of the priests, the Levites, and the principal
of the people, both here and 2 Chronicles 19:8; much like the old
Christian judicatures of the bishop, the presbyters, the deacons, and
the people.]
2 (return) [ Concerning this precious balsam, see the note on Atiq. B.
VIII. ch. 6. sect. 6.]
3 (return) [ What are here Pontus and Thrace, as the places whither
Jehoshaphat's fleet sailed, are in our other copies Ophir and Tarshish,
and the place whence it sailed is in them Eziongeber, which lay on the
Red Sea, whence it was impossible for any ships to sail to Pontus or
Thrace; so that Josephus's copy differed from our other copies, as is
further plain from his own words, which render what we read, that "the
ships were broken at Eziongeber, from their unwieldy greatness." But so
far we may conclude, that Josephus thought one Ophir to be some where in
the Mediterranean, and not in the South Sea, though perhaps there might
be another Ophir in that South Sea also, and that fleets might then sail
both from Phoenicia and from the Red Sea to fetch the gold of Ophir.]
4 (return) [ This god of flies seems to have been so called, as was the
like god among the Greeks, from his supposed power over flies, in
driving them away from the flesh of their sacrifices, which otherwise
would have been very troublesome to them.]
5 (return) [ It is commonly esteemed a very cruel action of Elijah, when
he called for fire from heaven, and consumed no fewer than two captains
and a hundred soldiers, and this for no other crime than obeying the
orders of their king, in attempting to seize him; and it is owned by our
Savior, that it was an instance of greater severity than the spirit of
the New Testament allows, Luke 9:54. But then we must consider that it
is not unlikely that these captains and soldiers believed that they were
sent to fetch the prophet, that he might be put to death for foretelling
the death of the king, and this while they knew him to be the prophet of
the true God, the supreme King of Israel, [for they were still under the
theocracy,] which was no less than impiety, rebellion, and treason, in
the highest degree: nor would the command of a subaltern, or inferior
captain, contradicting the commands of the general, when the captain and
the soldiers both knew it to be so, as I suppose, justify or excuse such
gross rebellion and disobedience in soldiers at this day. Accordingly,
when Saul commanded his guards to slay Ahimelech and the priests at Nob,
they knew it to be an unlawful command, and would not obey it, 1 Samuel
22:17. From which cases both officers and soldiers may learn, that the
commands of their leaders or kings cannot justify or excuse them in
doing what is wicked in the sight of God, or in fighting in an unjust
cause, when they know it so to be.]
6 (return) [ This practice of cutting down, or plucking up by the roots,
the fruit trees was forbidden, even in ordinary wars, by the law of
Moses, Deuteronomy 20:19, 20, and only allowed by God in this particular
case, when the Moabites were to be punished and cut off in an
extraordinary manner for their wickedness See Jeremiah 48:11-13, and
many the like prophecies against them. Nothing could therefore justify
this practice but a particular commission from God by his prophet, as in
the present case, which was ever a sufficient warrant for breaking any
such ritual or ceremonial law whatsoever.]
7 (return) [ That this woman who cried to Elisha, and who in our Bible
is styled "the wife of one of the sons of the prophets," 2 Kings 4:1,
was no other than the widow of Obadiah, the good steward of Ahab, is
confirmed by the Chaldee paraphrast, and by the Rabbins and others. Nor
is that unlikely which Josephus here adds, that these debts were
contracted by her husband for the support of those "hundred of the
Lord's prophets, whom he maintained by fifty in a cave," in the days of
Ahab and Jezebel, 1 Kings 18:4; which circumstance rendered it highly
fit that the prophet Elisha should provide her a remedy, and enable her
to redeem herself and her sons from the fear of that slavery which
insolvent debtors were liable to by the law of Moses, Leviticus 25:39;
Matthew 18:25; which he did accordingly, with God's help, at the expense
of a miracle.]
8 (return) [ Dr. Hudson, with very good reason, suspects that there is
no small defect in our present copies of Josephus, just before the
beginning of this section, and that chiefly as to that distinct account
which he had given us reason to expect in the first section, and to
which he seems to refer, ch. 8. sect. 6. concerning the glorious
miracles which Elisha wrought, which indeed in our Bibles are not a few,
2 Kings 6-9., but of which we have several omitted in Josephus's present
copies. One of those histories, omitted at present, was evidently in his
Bible, I mean that of the curing of Nanman's leprosy, 2 Kings 5.; for he
plainly alludes to it, B. III. ch. 11. sect. 4, where he observes, that
"there were lepers in many nations who yet have been in honor, and not
only free from reproach and avoidance, but who have been great captains
of armies, and been intrusted with high offices in the commonwealth, and
have had the privilege of entering into holy places and temples." But
what makes me most regret the want of that history in our present copies
of Josephus is this, that we have here, as it is commonly understood,
one of the greatest difficulties in all the Bible, that in 2 Kings 5:18,
19, where Naaman, after he had been miraculously cured by a prophet of
the true God, and had thereupon promised [ver. 17: that "he would
henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
but unto the Lord," adds, "In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant,
that when my master goeth into the house of Rimnu to worship there, and
he leaneth on my hands, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmort; when I
bow down myself in the house of Rimmort, the Lord pardon thy servant in
this thing. And Elisha said, Go in peace." This looks like a prophet's
permission for being partaker in idolatry itself, out of compliance with
an idolatrous court.]
9 (return) [ Upon occasion of this stratagem of Elisha, in Josephus, we
may take notice, that although Josephus was one of the greatest lovers
of truth in the world, yet in a just war he seems to have had no manner
of scruple upon him by all such stratagems possible to deceive public
enemies. See this Josephus's account of Jeremiah's imposition on the
great men of the Jews in somewhat like case, Antiq. B. X. ch. 7. sect.
6; 2 Samuel 16:16, &c.]
10 (return) [ This son of a murderer was Joram, the son of Ahab, which
Ahab slew, or permitted his wife Jezebel to slay, the Lord's prophets,
and Naboth, 1 Kings 18:4; 21:19; and he is here called by this name, I
suppose, because he had now also himself sent an officer to murder him;
yet is Josephus's account of Joram's coming himself at last as repenting
of his intended cruelty, much more probable than that in our copies, 2
Kings 6:33, which rather implies the contrary.]
11 (return) [ This law of the Jews, for the exclusion of lepers out of
the camp in the wilderness, and out of the cities in Judea, is a known
one, Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 5:14.]
12 (return) [ Since Elijah did not live to anoint Hazael king of Syria
himself, as he was empowered to do, 1 Kings 19:15, it was most probably
now done, in his name, by his servant and successor Elisha. Nor does it
seem to me otherwise but that Benhadad immediately recovered of his
disease, as the prophet foretold; and that Hazael, upon his being
anointed to succeed him though he ought to have staid till he died by
the course of nature, or some other way of Divine punishment, as did
David for many years in the like case, was too impatient, and the very
next day smothered or strangled him, in order to come directly to the
succession.]
13 (return) [ What Mr. Le Clerc pretends here, that it is more probable
that Hazael and his son were worshipped by the Syrians and people of
Damascus till the days of Josephus, than Benhadad and Hazael, because
under Benhadad they had greatly suffered, and because it is almost
incredible that both a king and that king's murderer should be
worshipped by the same Syrians, is of little force against those
records, out of which Josephus drew this history, especially when it is
likely that they thought Benhadad died of the distemper he labored
under, and not by Hazael's treachery. Besides, the reason that Josephus
gives for this adoration, that these two kings had been great
benefactors to the inhabitants of Damascus, and had built them temples,
is too remote from the political suspicions of Le Clerc; nor ought such
weak suspicions to be deemed of any force against authentic testimonies
of antiquity.]
14 (return) [ This epistle, in some copies of Josephus, is said to come
to Jotare from Elijah, with this addition," for he was yet upon earth,"
which could not be true of Elijah, who, as all agree, was gone from the
earth about four years before, and could only be true of Elisha; nor
perhaps is there any more mystery here, than that the name of Elijah has
very anciently crept into the text instead of Elisha, by the copiers,
there being nothing in any copy of that epistle peculiar to Elijah.]
15 (return) [ Spanheim here notes, that this putting off men's garments,
and strewing them under a king, was an Eastern custom, which he had
elsewhere explained.]
16 (return) [ Our copies say that this "driving of the chariots was like
the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously," 2
Kings 9:20; whereas Josephus's copy, as he understood it, was this,
that, on the contrary, Jehu marched slowly, and in good order. Nor can
it be denied, that since there was interval enough for king Joram to
send out two horsemen, one after another, to Jehu, and at length to go
out with king Ahaziah to meet him, and all this after he was come within
sight of the watchman, and before he was come to Jezreel, the
probability is greatly on the side of Josephus's copy or
interpretation.]
17 (return) [ This character of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, that "he was
a good man, and in his disposition not at all like to his father," seems
a direct contradiction to our ordinary copies, which say [2 Kings 13:11]
that "he did evil in the sight of the Lord; and that he departed not
from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin:
he walked therein." Which copies are here the truest it is hard
positively to determine. If Josephus's be true, this Joash is the single
instance of a good king over the ten tribes; if the other be true, we
have not one such example. The account that follows, in all copies, of
Elisha the prophet's concern for him, and his concern for Elisha,
greatly favors Josephus's copies, and supposes this king to have been
then a good man, and no idolater, with whom God's prophets used not to
be so familiar. Upon the whole, since it appears, even by Josephus's own
account, that Amaziah, the good king of Judah, while he was a good king,
was forbidden to make use of the hundred thousand auxiliaries he had
hired of this Joash, the king of Israel, as if he and they were then
idolaters, 2 Chronicles 25:6-9, it is most likely that these different
characters of Joash suited the different parts of his reign, and that,
according to our common copies, he was at first a wicked king, and
afterwards was reclaimed, and became a good one, according to Josephus.]
18 (return) [ What I have above noted concerning Jehoash, seems to me to
have been true also concerning his son Jeroboam II., viz. that although
he began wickedly, as Josephus agrees with our other copies, and, as he
adds, "was the cause of a vast number of misfortunes to the Israelites"
in those his first years, [the particulars of which are unhappily
wanting both in Josephus and in all our copies,] so does it seem to me
that he was afterwards reclaimed, and became a good king, and so was
encouraged by the prophet Jonah, and had great successes afterward, when
"God had saved the Israelites by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of
Joash," 2 Kings 14:27; which encouragement by Jonah, and great
successes, are equally observable in Josephus, and in the other copies.]
19 (return) [ When Jonah is said in our Bibles to have gone to Tarshish,
Jonah 1:3, Josephus understood it that he went to Tarsus in Cilicia, or
to the Mediterranean Sea, upon which Tarsus lay; so that he does not
appear to have read the text, 1 Kings 22:48, as our copies do, that
ships of Tarshish could lie at Ezion-geber, upon the Red Sea. But as to
Josephus's assertion, that Jonah's fish was carried by the strength of
the current, upon a nean, it is by no means an improbable determination
in Josephus.]
20 (return) [ This ancient piece of religion, of supposing there was
great sin where there was great misery, and of casting lots to discover
great sinners, not only among the Israelites, but among these heathen
mariners, seems a remarkable remains of the ancient tradition which
prevailed of old over all mankind, that Providence used to interpose
visibly in all human affairs, and storm, as far as the Euxine Sea, it is
no way impossible; and since the storm might have driven the ship, while
Jonah was in it never to bring, or at least not long to continue,
notorious judge, near to that Euxine Sea, and since in three more days,
while but for notorious sins, which the most ancient Book of he was in
the fish's belly, that current might bring him to the Job shows to have
been the state of mankind for about the Assyrian coast, and since withal
that coast could bring him former three thousand years of the world,
till the days of Job nearer to Nineveh than could any coast of the
Mediterranian and Moses.]
21 (return) [ This account of an earthquake at Jerusalem at the very
same time when Uzziah usurped the priest's office, and went into the
sanctuary to burn incense, and of the consequences of the earthquake, is
entirely wanting in our other copies, though it be exceeding like to a
prophecy of Jeremiah, now in Zechariah 14:4, 5; in which prophecy
mention is made of "fleeing from that earthquake, as they fled from this
earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah;" so that there seems to
have been some considerable resemblance between these historical and
prophetical earthquakes.]
22 (return) [ Dr. Wall, in his critical notes on 2 Kings 15:20,
observes, "that when this Menahem is said to have exacted the money of
Israel of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of
silver, to give Pul, the king of Assyria, a thousand talents, this is
the first public money raised by any [Israelite] king by tax on the
people; that they used before to raise it out of the treasures of the
house of the Lord, or of their own house; that it was a poll-money on
the rich men, [and them only,] to raise oe353,000, or, as others count a
talent, oe400,000, at the rate of oe6 or oe7 per head; and that God
commanded, by Ezekiel, ch. 45:8; 46:18, that no such thing should be
done [at the Jews' restoration], but the king should have land of his
own."]
23 (return) [ This passage is taken out of the prophet Nahum, ch. 2:8-
13, and is the principal, or rather the only, one that is given us
almost verbatim, but a little abridged, in all Josephus's known
writings: by which quotation we learn what he himself always asserts,
viz. that he made use of the Hebrew original and not of the Greek
version]; as also we learn, that his Hebrew copy considerably differed
from ours. See all three texts particularly set down and compared
together in the Essay on the Old Testament, page 187.]
24 (return) [ This siege of Samaria, though not given a particular
account of, either in our Hebrew or Greek Bibles, or in Josephus, was so
very long, no less than three years, that it was no way improbable but
that parents, and particularly mothers, might therein be reduced to eat
their own children, as the law of Moses had threatened upon their
disobedience, Leviticus 26;29; Deuteronomy 28:53-57; and as was
accomplished in the other shorter sieges of both the capital cities,
Jerusalem and Samaria; the former mentioned Jeremiah 19:9; Antiq. B. IX.
ch. 4. sect. 4, and the latter, 2 Kings 6:26-29.]