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thorns, in an exclusive sense, but in general things that are sharp-pointed.

I can assign no reason why thorns, (or sharppointed things,) such as were used for taking fish, are mentioned in the last clause, unless it should be understood to mean the great severity with which the women of Israel should be driven away, in the last captivity of those of the ten tribes under Hoshea. Instruments not very unlike the Eastern goads have been used, I think, for catching fish, and were meant by our translators when they used the term fish-spears, Job xli. 7; but then they must have been much sharper than goads, in order to secure the fish. But a goad sharpened to a point like a fish-spear, must have been a dreadful instrument to drive cattle with, wounding them so as to occasion great anguish in their travelling along, and therefore not an improper representation, of the great severity used in driving the latter captives under Hoshea into Assyria.

My reader will observe here, that I suppose the words achareeth, translated posterity in the 2d verse, means rather the remainder, those that came after them that were first carried away of the ten tribes: so the word is

Even shields, which anciently oftentimes had a sharp spike fixed in the middle of the outside surface. 1 Kings x. 16.

So Camden, in his account of our native island, tells us, that those that live by the sides of Solway Frith hunt salmons, whereof there is great plenty there, with spears on horseback. Under his account of Nidisdale.

twice used, Ezek. xxiii. 25, once translated remnant, and the other time residue. And, agreeably to this, we find the people of the kingdom of the ten tribes were carried away at twice, the more northern and eastern parts by Tiglath-Pileser, the rest several years, after by Shalmaneser, and it is natural to suppose the treatment these last met with, was more severe than what the first felt.

The last clause probably was designed to express whether they were to be driven, as some of the old translations understood it to mean, but it is not the design of these papers to examine matters of that kind. It is sufficient to observe, that the two words of the 2d verse,

tsinneeth an seeroth dugah, the one rendered hooks in our version, the other fishhooks, mean sharp-pointed instruments used for the driving away of cattle; but the last supposed to be more pointed than the first, and sharpened to such a degree, as even to be fit for the striking of fish. Ye shall be driven away, ye fatted kine of Israel, as with goads; and the last parcel of you with instruments sharp as fish-spears.

2 Kings xv. 20.

Ch. xvii. 3, 6.

OBSERVATION XXXVIII.

Public Justice badly administered in the East.

AMONG Several of the smaller tribes of the Eastern people, who are a good deal independent, persons take upon them to do themselves justice, if they think they are injured, without much notice of it being taken by their superiors. A state of things so nearly resembling anarchy as appears very surprising to Europeans. It seems to have been the same anciently.

Niebuhr says, that if two Shekhs of the Druses* quarrel," they send their peasants into the village of their enemy, cause the inhabitants to be massacred, cut down the mulberry and olive-trees, and the Emir' oftentimes does not punish these excesses." In other cases he

mentions the burning of houses.

It should suppose we are to understand the Philistine burning the spouse of Samson and her father, not as the consequence of the regular decision of the nation; but the tumultuary exercise of justice like that of the modern Druses.-Samson a principal Israelite, burnt, they were informed, some of their

The chiefs of their villages each village having its Shekh. The Druses being one of the sorts of people that inhabit Libanus.

f The head of that nation.

Voy. en Arabie & en d'autres Pays, tome 2, p. 550.

corn-fields, their vineyards and olive-yards, in consequence of an injury he had received; and those that had suffered that loss revenged it, by setting fire to the house of him that provoked him to this vengeance, in which he and his daughter miserably perished. Judges xv. 6.

OBSERVATION XXXIX.

Peasants, in Persia, permitted to approach the Throne, with Complaints of Oppression against their Rulers.

A GREAT likeness appears, between the managements of the Jews, when the chief captain of the Roman garrison of Jerusalem presented himself in the temple," and the behaviour of the Persian peasants, when they go to court to complain of the governors under whom they live, upon their oppressions becoming intolerable, which resemblance may place that passage of the Acts of the Apostles in the particular point of light, in which in truth it ought to be reviewed.

Sir John Chardin has given us an account of the behaviour of the Persian peasants on such occasions, in the 2d tome of his printed Travels, where he tells us, "the people carry their complaints against their governors by companies, consisting of several hundreds, and sometimes a thousand; they repair to that

h Acts xxii. 23.

i P. 222.

gar

gate of the palace near to which their prince is most likely to be, where they set themselves to make the most horrid cries, tearing their ments, and throwing dust into the air, at the same time demanding justice..... The king, upon hearing these cries, sends to know the occasion of them. The people deliver their complaint in writing, upon which he lets them know, that he will commit the cognisance of the affair to such, or such an one. In consequence of which it seems justice is wont to be

done them."

Thus when the Jews found St. Paul in the Temple, prejudiced as they were against him in general, and then irritated by a mistaken notion, that he had polluted the holy place by the introduction of Greeks into it, they raised a tumult, and appeared to be on the point of tearing the apostle in pieces; but no account of throwing dust into the air, or any mention of their garments, or long-continued cries; there was only an exclamation of the Asiatic Jews stirring up the people of Jerusalem against the apostle, a running of the people together upon that, a dragging him out of that court in which the Jews worshipped into the court of the Gentiles, and then falling upon him, and beating him with such violence as would have ended in the loss of his life; when the chief captain of the Roman soldiers, who resided in a castle adjoining to the Temple, hearing the tumult, immediately hastened thither, upon which they left beating the apostle, and ap

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