CHAPTER XX. "And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz."-Ver. 11. THERE is no necessity to enter into the speculations of learned men as to the precise form of the sun-dial here spoken of, and upon which the miracle, in answer to the prophet's prayer, was performed.* With regard to the miracle itself, Lobenthal, as Keil † observes, has satisfactorily proved that the text does not require the assumption of a regression of the sun, or a reversion of the rotation of the earth, as the church fathers, Ephraem the Syrian, Jacob of Edessa in Eph., Theodoret, and many others believed. It only asserts a miraculous recession of the shadow, in explanation of which we do not want the hypothesis of a rising and sinking, by means of an earthquake, of the body that cast the shadow on the steps, but only the assumption of a miraculous refraction of the sun's rays, effected by God, at the entreaty of the prophet, for which faint analogies occur in the usual course of nature; as, for example, the phenomenon quoted by all expositors, observed in the year 1703, at Metz, in Lothringen, by the prior of the monastery there, P. Romuld, and others, namely, that the shadow of a sun-dial went back an hour and a half. CHAPTER XXI. "And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house," etc.-Ver. 7. Ir seems a strange thing for Manasseh to have made the image of a grove, and to have placed it in the house They may be seen in Pictorial Bible, in loco., etc. of the Lord as an object of religious worship. But the fact is that the Hebrew word asherah, although it sometimes denotes a grove, seems more frequently employed to signify an idol, an image carved out of wood-Astarte, or Venus (see the following verses). "And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it to small powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people. And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove."-Ver. 6, 7. 66 To bring out a grove from the house of the Lord, as Josiah, rather Hilkiah the priest by command of Josiah, is here represented to have done, seems hardly a likely thing, any more than the weaving of hangings for a grove would be. Nor is there any necessity so to read the text. The confusion has arisen from the circumstance of the Hebrew asherah a grove," being sometimes the name given to the goddess introduced into Israel by King Solomon, and by the worship of which the Israelites became so lamentably infected. She is sometimes named Ashtaroth, at other times Astarte, and again Asherah; and it is her image, no doubt, that is spoken of in the text; the same "graven image of the grove" which Manasseh made, and set up in the house of the Lord (chap. xxi. 7). Whenever Asherah is associated with Baal in the history of the Israelites, the former of these terms denotes an idol, and not a collection of trees, as it does in some passages (Deut. xii. 3, etc.) THE FIRST BOOK OF CHRONICLES. CHAPTER I. THERE are many variations in the names of persons mentioned in this chapter, compared with the genealogies preserved in the book of Genesis. Several of these arise merely from the mutation of certain Hebrew letters; others from the want of an uniform method of rendering the Hebrew by the translators; and some others, probably, from the circumstance of the same person having two or more names ;-no uncommon thing. CHAPTER II. "And afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead, whom he married when he was threescore years old; and she bare him Segub. And Segub begat Jair, who had three-and-twenty cities in the land of Gilead."-Ver. 21, 22. THIS and other passages, as the acute and ingenious editor of Calmet observes,* afford an instance of adoption, attention to which will tend to remove some Scripture difficulties.-Machir (grandson of Joseph) called "Father of Gilead" (that is, chief of that town), gave his daughter to Hezron, "who took her ; and he was a son of sixty years (sixty years of age), and she bare him Segub and Segub begat Jair, who had twenty-three cities in the land. of Gilead "—no doubt, the landed estate of Machir, "Fragments," No. 329. : who was so desirous of a male heir. Jair acquired a number of other cities, which made up his possessions to threescore cities: however, he as well as his posterity and their cities, instead of being reckoned to the family of Judah, as they ought to have been, by their paternal descent from Hezron, are reckoned as sons of Machir, the father of Gilead. Nay, more, it appears from Numb. xxxii. 41, that this very Jair, who was, in fact, the son of Segub, the son of Hezron, the son of Judah, is expressly said to be "the son of Manasseh," because his maternal (rather his adopting) great-grandfather was Machir, the son of Manasseh, and Jair inheriting his property, was his lineal representative. So that we should never have suspected his being other than a son of Manasseh, naturally, had only the passage in Numbers been extant. In like manner, Sheshan, of the tribe of Judah, gives his daughter to Jarha, an Egyptian slave (whom he liberated, no doubt, on that occasion); but the posterity of this marriage, Attai, etc., are not reckoned to Jarha, as an Egyptian, but are reckoned to Sheshan, as an Israelite; and succeeded to his estate and station in Israel. (Vide verse 34, etc.) Thus, also, we read, that Mordecai adopted Esther, his niece, he took her to himself to be a daughter, (Heb. "to daughter," as we say to take to wife). N.B. This being in the time of Israel's captivity, Mordecai had no landed estate; for if he had had any, he would not have adopted a daughter, but a son. (Esther ii. 7.) Thus, also, the daughter of Pharaoh adopted Moses: and he was to her to be a son (literally, to son,—as before). (Exod. ii. 10.) Thus, also, we read (Ruth iv. 17) that Naomi had a son: a son is born to Naomi; when indeed it was the son of Ruth, and only a distant relation, or none at all, to Naomi, who was merely the wife of Elimelech, to whom Boaz was a kinsman, but not the nearest by consanguinity. Thus, too, we read of Hiram, the artificer, that he was the son of a widow woman-herself of the tribe of Naphthali (1 Kings vii. 14); but Hiram is described (2 Chron. ii. 14) as the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan. Then we have a passage which includes no inconsiderable difficulty in regard to kindred; but which is, perhaps, to be explained upon this principle. The reader will perceive it at once, by comparing the columns. 2 KINGS Xxiv. 17. "And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, his [Jehoiachin's] FATHER'S BROTHER, king in his stead; and changed his name to Zedekiah." By this it appears that Zedekiah was SON to Josiah, the father of Jehoiachin; and, consequently, that he was UNCLE to Jehoiachin. JEREMIAH i. 2, 3. "In the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the SON of Josiah king of Judah." Also, chap. xxxvii. 1: "And king Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, reigned". 2 CHRON. XXXvi. 9, 10. "Jehoiachin reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem, and when the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of the Lord; and made Zedekiah, HIS BROTHER, king over Judah and Jerusalem." 1 CHRON. iii. 16. "And the SONS of Jehoiakim were, Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah HIS SON." By this it appears that Zedekiah was SON to Jehoiakim. How is this? Zedekiah is, in Kings, "the son of Josiah :" in Chronicles he is "the son of Jehoiakim!" |