Solomon, the greatest of tho Jewish mon- Ver. H.-The veaaele also of gold and archs, if we consider the extent and pros- silver. See eh. i. 7-11. On the great im- perity of his kingdom, and the position that portance attached to these vessels, see the it occupied among the other kingdoms of comment on eh. i. 7. So long na they re- the earth- a "great king" under whatever mained at Babylon they were' a tangible aspect we view him, though one who sowed evidence of the conqucst, e. glory to the the seeds of that corruption which ultimately Babylonians, and a disgrace to the Jews. sapped the national life, and provoked God Their retention was a perpetue.1 desecration. to bring the monarchy to an end. Their restoration by Cyrus was an a.et at Ver. 12.-0ur fathers provoked the God once of piety and of kindliness. On the of heaven nnto wrath. Mainly by their temple of Babylon, out of which Cyrus took long series of idolatries, with the moral them, see the comment on eh. i. 7. abominations that those idolatries involved- Ver. 16.-Let the house of God bebuilded the sacrifice of children by their own parents, in his place. I. e. upon the old holy site- the licentious rites belonging to the worship the place where .A.braham offered his son of Baal, and the unmentionable horrors Isaac, in a figure (Heh. xi. 17-19), where practised by the devotees of the Dea Syra. the an~l stood and stayed the pestilence For centuries, with only short and rare in David's time (2 Sam. xxiv. 16-18), and intervals, "the chief of the priests, and the where "the glory of the Lord descended and people, had tran8<,aressed very much after all filled the house " under Solomon (2 Chron. the abominations of the heathen," and had vii 1). even "polluted the house of the Lord which Ver. 16.-Since that time even until now he had hallowed in Jerusalem" (2 Chron. he.th it been in building. It is not quite xxxn 14). Therefore, he gave them into clear whether these words are part of the the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of answer given by the Jews to Tatnai, which llabylon. He punished, as he always does, he reports to Darius (see ver. 11), or Tatnai's national apostasy with national destruction. own statement of what he believes to have Making an idelatrous people, but a less guilty been the fact. Perhaps the latter view is the one, his sword, he cut off Judah, as he had more probable ; and we may suppose Tatnai prenously cut off Israel, causing the national not to have been aware that from the second life to cease, and even removing the bulk of year of Cyrus to the commencement of the the people into a distant country. Not by reign of Smerdis, and again during the latter his own power or might did Nebuchadnezzar part of this reign and the first eighteen prevail God could have delivered the Jews months of the reign of Darius, the work had from him as easily as he had delivered them been suspended. in former days from Jabin (Judges iv. 2-24), Ver. 17.-Let there be search me.de in and from Zerah (2 Chron. xiv. 11-15), and the king's treasure house. The Vulgate he.s from Sennacherib (2 Kings xix. 20-36). '' in the king's library ; " and this, though But he was otherwise minded; he ''gave them not the literal rendering, is probably what into the hand of N ebuchaduezzar" (comp. 2 was intended by Tatnai Libraries or record Chron. xxx:vi.17). He divided their counsels, chambers were attached to the royal resid- paralysed their resistance, caused Pharaoh ences under the old Assyrian and Babylonian Hophra to desert their cause (2 Kings xxiv. kings ; and the practice was no doubt con- 7), and left them helpless and unprotected. tinued by the Persians. Some of these record !s ebnchadnezzar was his instrnmen t to chas- offices have been recently found, and their tise his guilty people, and in pursuing his stores recovered. In the year 1850 Mr. own ends merely worked out the puryoses of Layard came upon the royal library of Asshur- the Almighty. bani-pal at Koyunjik, and obtained from it hr. 13.-In the first year of Cyrus the several hundreds of documents. More re- king of Babylon. Recent discoveries of con- cently, in 1875-6, some Arab explorers tract tablets have shown that at Babylon happened upon a similar collection near Cvrus bore the title of "king of Babylon" Babylon, which yielded from 3000 to 4000 fiom the date of his conquest of the city. tablets (' Transactions of the Society of :The same title was passed on to his success- Biblical Archreology,' vol. vi pp. 4, 682). ' ors, Cambyses, Darius, &c. Henc:i, ~e find, It is ~uite possible that the "decree of Artaxerxes Longimanue called king of Cyrus ' may still exist, and be one day Babylon" by Nehemiah (xiii 6). recovered.
HOMILETICS. Vera. 3--17.-0p_position revived. W~ have in these verses a twofold, acc?u~t of two different things. In vers. 3, 4, m the first place, we have the historians 11,ccow1t of the n,vived opposition called out by the revival of the work of temple- OH. V, 3-17.) THE BOOK OF EZRA. 78