It is easy to imagine the bitter grief and burning in- dignation of those who continued faithful. The fiercest zeal of Huguenots in France, of Covenanters in Scot- land, against the badges and symbols of the Latin Church, is perhaps but a faint shadow of that which grew to a white heat in the hearts of the worshippers of Jehovah. They spoke out in words of corresponding strength. Evil was coming on Jerusalem which should make the ears of men to tingle (2 Kings xxi, 12). The line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab should be the doom of the Hoh^ City. Like a vessel that had once been full of precious ointment (comp. the Sept. rt\rt/3a(Trpoj');but had afterwards become foul, Je- rusalem should be emptied and wiped out, and exposed to the winds of Heaven till it was cleansed. Foremost, we may well believe, among those who thus bore their witness was the old prophet, now bent with the weight of fourscore years, who had in his earlier days protested with equal courage against the crimes of the king's grandfather. On him, too, according to the old Jewish tradition, came the first shock of the persecution. En- raged at the rebukes which the aged prophet doubtless administered, the king is said to have caused him to be sawn asunder with a wooden saw ; this fate seems to be alluded to in Ileb. xi, 37. See Isaiah. Habakkuk may have shared his martyrdom (Keil on 2 Kings xxi ; but comp. Habakk(ik). But the persecution did not stop there. It attacked the whole order of the true proph- ets, and those who followed them. Every day witness- ed an execution (Josephus, Ant. x, 3, 1). The slaughter was like that under Alva or Charles IX (2 Kings xxi, 16). The martyrs who were faithful unto death had to endure not torture only, but the mocks and taunts of a
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godless generation (Isa. Ivii, 1-4). Long afterwards the remembrance of that reign of terror lingered in the minds of men as a guilt lor which nothing could atone (2 Kings xxiv, 4). The persecution, like most other persecutions carried on with entire singleness of pur- pose, was for a time successful (Jer. ii, 30). The proph- ets appear no more in the long history of IManasseh's reign. The heart and the intellect of the nation were crushed out, and there would seem to have been no chroniclers left to record this portion of its history,
3. Retribution came soon in the natiu-al sequence of events. There are indications that the neighboring na- tions— Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites — who had been tributary under Hezekiah, revolted at some period in the reign of Manasseh, and asserted their independence (Zeph. ii, 4-19; Jer. xlvii, xlviii, xlix). The Babylo- nian alliance bore the fruits which had been predicted. Hezekiah had been too hasty in attaching himself to the cause of the rebel prince against AssjTia. The re- bellion of Merodach-Baladan was crushed, and then the wrath of the Assyrian king fell on those who had sup- ported him. See Esak-haddon. According to others, during the constant war between Assyria and Egypt, Manasseh adhered to the policy of his father in making common cause with the latter power. One or the other of these causes, although not stated by the sacred his- torian, brought into Judrea an Assyrian army, under the general of Esar-haddon, and this time the invasion was more successful than that of Sennacherib. The city apparently was taken. The miserable king attempted flight, but was discovered in a thorn-brake in which he had hidden himself, was laden with chains, and sent away as a captive to Babylon, which was then subject to the Assyrians, where he was cast into prison. His name has been discovered on the Assyrian monuments (Journ. of Sac. Lit. April, 1859, p. 75). See Niseveh. Here, at last, jManasseh had ample opportunity and lei- sure for cool reflection ; and the hard lessons of adversit}' were not lost upon him. He saw and deplored the evils of his reign — he became as a new man — he humbly be- sought pardon from God, and implored that he might be enabled to evince the sincerity of his contrition by being restored to a position for undoing all that it had been the business of his life to effect. His prayer was heard. His captivity is supposed to have lasted a year, and he was then restored to his kingdom under certain obligations of tribute and allegiance to the king of As- syria, which, although not expressed in the account of this transaction, are alluded to in the historj' of his suc- cessors (2 Chron. xxxiii, 11-13 ; comp. Maurice, Proph- ets and Kiiif/s, p. 362). See Manasses, Pijayer of.
Two questions meet us at this point, (a) Have we satisfactory grounds for believing that this statement is historically true? (6) If we accept it, to what period in the reign of Manasseh is it to be assigned? It has been urged in regard to («) that the silence of the writer of the books of Kings is conclusive against the trust- worthiness of the narrative of 2 Chronicles. In the for- mer there is no mention made of captivity or repent- ance or return. The latter, it has been said, yields to the temptation of pointing a moral, of making history apjiear more in harmony with his own notions of the divine government than it actually is. His anxiety to deal leniently with the s\iccess()rs of David leads him to invent at once a reformation and the captivity which is represented as its cause (IJoseninidlcr, JrihI. Al.'rrt/i. i, 2, p. 131 ; Hitzig, Befff. d. Krililc, p. 130). It will be nec- essary in dealing with this objection to meet the scep- tical critic on his own ground. To say that his rea- soning contradicts our belief in the inspiration of the historic.ll books of Scripture, and is destructive of all reverence for them, would involve a pititio frincipii, and, however strongly it may inlluence.our feelings, we are bound to find another answer. It is believed that the answer is not far to seek. (1) The silence of a writer who sums up the history of a reign of fifty-five years in nineteen verses as to one alleged event in it is