surely a weak ground for refusing to accept that event on the authority of another historian. (2) The omis- sion is in part explained bj' the character of the narra- tive of 2 Kings xxi. The writer deliberately turns away froin the history of the days of shame, and not less from the personal biograph}' of the king. He looks on the reign only as it contributed to the corruption and final overthrow of the kingdom, and no after repentance was able to undo the mischief that had been done at first. (3) Still keeping on the level of human probabilities, the character of the writer of 2 Chronicles, obviously a Le- vite, and looking at the facts of the history from the Levitical point of view, would lead him to attach greater importance to a partial reinstatement of the old ritual and to the cessation of persecution, and so to give them in proportion a greater prominence. (4) There is one peculiarity in the history which is, in some measure, of the nature of an undesigned coincidence, and so confirms it. The captains of the host of Assj-ria take Manasseh to Babylon. Would not a later writer, inventing the story, have made the Assyrian, and not the Babylonian, capital the scene of the captivitj- ; or, if the latter were chosen for the sake of harmony with the prophecy of Isa. xxxix, have made the king of Babylon rather than of Assyria the captor? As it is, the narrative fits in, with the utmost accuracy, to the facts of Oriental histo- rj'. The first attempt of Babylon to assert its indepen- dence of Nineveh failed. It was crushed by Esar-had- don (the first or second of that name ; compare Esar- haddon, and Ewald, Gcsch. Isr. iii, G75), and for a time the Assyrian king held his court at Babylon, so as to effect more completely the reduction of the rebellious province. There is (5) the fact of agreement with the intervention of the Assyrian king in 2 Kings xvii, 24, just at the same time. The king is not named there, but Ezra iv, 2, 10, gives Asnapper, and this is probably only another form of Asardanapar, and this = Esar-had- don (compare Ewald, Gesch. iii, C76; Tob. i, 21 gives Sarchedonus). The importation of tribes from Eastern Asia thus becomes part of the same policy as the attack on Judah. On the whole, then, the objection may well be dismissed as frivolous and vexatious. Like many other difficulties urged by the same school, it has in it something at once captious and puerile. Those who lay undue stress on them act in the spirit of a clever boy asking puzzling questions, or a sharp advocate getting up a case against the evidence on the other side, rather than in that of critics who have learned how to construct a history and to value its materials rightly (comp. Kcil, Comment, on 2 Kings xxi). Ewald. a critic of a nobler stamp, whose fault is rather that of fantastic reconstruc- tion than needless scepticism [Gesch. Isr. iii, G78 ), ad- mits the groundwork of truth. Would the prophecy of Isaiah, it may be asked, have been recorded and pre- served if it had not been fulfilled ? Might not Manas- seh's release have been, as Ewald suggests, the direct consequence of the death of Esar-haddon? Indeed, all the soberer German critics accept it as truth, and jdace IManasseh's captivity under Esar-haddon (Bcrthcau, ad loc). Bertheau suggests that some support to the ac- count may perhaps be found in 2 Kings xx, 17 ?q. For other discussions of the alleged improbabilities of the Biblical narrative, see Dahlers, De Jide Chronic, hist. p. 139; Gramberg, Chron. p. 199, 210; ReUrjionsid. ii, 234; Rosenmiiller, Alterth. I, ii, 131 ; KeU, Apoloff. der Chro- niL p. 425 ; Havernick, Einleit. II, i, 221 ; Stud, u Krit. 18(!0. vol. iii.
(b.) The circumstance just noticed enables us to return an approximate answer to the other question. The du- ration of F^sar-h addon's Babylonian reign is calculated as being in B.C. C80-C67 ; and Manasseh's captivity must therefore have Allien within those limits. A .Jew- ish tradition (Seder Olam Rahhct, c. 24 ) fixes the twen- tj'-second year of his reign as the exact date.
4. The jieriod that folloived is dwelt upon by the writer of 2 Chronicles as one of a great change for the better. The discipluie of exile made the king feel that
MANASSEH
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MANASSEH
the gods TV'liom he had chosen were powerless to deliver, and he turned in his heart to Jehovah, the God of his fathers. The compassion or death of Esar-haddon led to his release, and he returned after some uncertain in- terval of time to Jerusalem. It is not improbable that his absence from that city had given a breathing time to the oppressed adherents of the ancient creed, and possibly had brought into prominence, as the provisional ruler and defender of the city, one of the chief members of the party. If the prophecy of Isa. xxii, 15 received, as it probably did, its I'ultilment in Shebna's sharing the captivity of his master, there is nothing extravagant in the belief that we may refer to the same period the no- ble words which speak of Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, as taking the place which Shebna shoidd leave vacant, and rising up to be "a father unto the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah," having " the key of the house of David on his shoulder."