[442] 2 Chron. xxviii. 19.
[443] It may mean "God is good" (Tabeel).
[444] For further explanations I must refer to my paper on Rabbinic Exegesis (_Expositor_, First Series, v. 373).
[445] 2 Chron. xxviii. 7.
[446] Of Oded nothing else is known.
[447] Some, however, interpret the name "A remnant repents" (LXX., ὁ καταλειφθεὶς Ἰασούβ; Vulg., _Qui derelictus est Jaseb_).
[448] Isa. vi. 13.
[449] The words "And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people" (Isa. vii. 8), are almost certainly an interpolation: for (1) the overthrow came within far less than sixty years; (2) the clause awkwardly breaks the context; (3) the "sixty years" is inconsistent with the promise (vii. 16) that it should be within very few years.
[450] Isa. vii. 1-25.
[451] Not improbably the water which afterwards flowed through Hezekiah's new tunnel between the Virgin's Tomb and the Pool of Siloam. It is referred to in 2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 30 (Isa. xxii. 9-11). See Appendix II.
[452] This, if it be correct, can only mean that the son of Tabeal had a party in Jerusalem; but Hitzig renders it "_dreadeth_," not "rejoiceth in."
[453] The meaning is by no means clear.
[454] See Driver, _Isaiah_, p. 34.
2 KINGS xvi. 1-18
"For when we in our wickedness grow hard, Oh misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our errors; laugh at us while we strut To our confusion."
Ahaz was indifferent to these prophecies because his heart was otherwhere. It is clear from our authorities that this king had excited an unusually deep antipathy in the hearts of those later writers who judged religion not only from the earlier standpoint, but from the stern and inexorable requirements of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes. The historian, adopting an unusual phrase, says that "he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel." He not only continued the high places, as the best of his predecessors had done, but he increased their popularity and importance by personally offering sacrifices and burning incense "on the hills and under every green tree." It is probable, too, that he introduced into Judah horses and chariots dedicated to the sun.[455] "He made molten images for the Baalim," says the Chronicler, "and burnt incense in the valley of the son of Himmon."
This last was his crowning atrocity: he actually sanctioned the revolting worship of the abomination of the children of Ammon, which Solomon had tolerated on the mount of offence. "He made his son to pass through the fire." The Chronicler expresses it still more dreadfully by saying that "he _burnt his children_ in the fire."[456]
In the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, or of the Benî-Hinnom, of which the name is perpetuated in Gehenna, the place of torture for lost souls, there stood a frightful image of the king--Moloch, Melek, Malcham. It represented the sun-god, worshipped, not only as Baal under the emblems of prolific nature, but, like the Egyptian Typhon, as the emblem of the sun's scorching and blighting force. It was perhaps a human figure with the head of an ox. The arms of the brazen image sloped downwards over a cistern, which was filled with fuel; and when a human sacrifice was to be offered to him, the child was probably first killed, and then placed on these brazen arms as a gift to the idol. It rolled down into the flaming tank, and was consumed amid the strains of music. Recourse was only had to the most frightful form of human sacrifice--the burning of grown-up victims--in extremities of disaster, as when Mesha of Moab offered up his eldest son to Chemosh on the wall of Kir-Hareseth in the sight of his people and of the three invading armies. But the sacrifice of children was public, and perhaps annual. Hence Milton, following the learned researches of Selden in his Syntagma _De Dis Syriis_, writes:--