shall surely die in the wilderness," Numb. xxvi, 65, though they were not sacrificed or executed, but died a natural death*. Or else the text in Leviticus, according to Mr. Selden, is to be restrained to such as were devoted to death by the appointment and law of God; as the inhabitants of Jericho, Josh. vi, 17; and such of the Israelites as in case of war did not obey military orders, and perform the charge laid upon them; in particular, the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, who complied not with the general summons to go and fight against Benjamin, Judg. xxi, 5, 8, 9, 10. And perhaps it may extend to all who had been guilty of any crime, that was made capital by the law of God, and so the design of it was no more than to restrain inferior magistrates from pardoning capital offenders, which was the prerogative of God only, as their king+.

Most of the ancient Christian writers are of opinion that Jephthah actually sacrificed his daughter, and so is Dr. Lightfoot.

Now the chief reasons which are alleged in favour of this opinion, besides that it agrees to the more natural meaning of the Hebrew text, are,

1st, That there is no rule, nor precedent in scripture to justify the practice of devoting persons to perpetual virginity, but, on the contrary, this is spoken of as one of the antichristian corruptions of the "latter times, when men should depart from the faith, and give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils," 1 Tim. iv, 1. Nor was there any office belonging to the temple service to be performed by women, except, perhaps, that some of the daughters of the Levites assisted by their voices in the temple choir, as some think is intimated in this passage of the first book of Chronicles, " And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. All these were under the hands of their father, for song in the house of the Lord with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, for the service of the house of God, according to the king's order to Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman," 1 Chron. xxv, 5, 6. How

See Sykes's Principles and Connection of Natural and Revealed Religion, chap. xiii.

+ Selden de Jure Nat. et Gent. lib. iv, cap. vi-x.

Serm. on Judg. xi, 39, vol. ii, p. 1215.

ever, Jephthah was not a Levite, and therefore his daughter could bear no part even in that service, nor hath nunnery any countenance, either in the Jewish or Christian law; and to suppose, therefore, that Jephthah devoted his daughter to perpetual virginity, is to suppose him acting as contrary to the law of God, as if he had sacrificed her.

2dly, What could he expect to come out of the door of his house to meet him but a human person? Can we think that Jephthah had his dog in his thoughts when he made this vow? a creature that was particularly excepted from being in any sense sanctified and devoted to God, as any clean beast might be, Lev. xxvii, 9, 11, compared with Deut. xxiii, 18.

3dly, If he had intended no more than the sacrifice of a bullock, or a ram, what need was there of such a solemn vow? If he had meant a brutal sacrifice, he would surely have vowed to sacrifice hetacombs, rather than a single animal, on so great an occasion, or, like Jacob, he would have vowed to give the "tenth of all his substance unto the Lord," Gen. xxviii, 22.

4thly, We read, that it was a "custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah," Judg. xi, 39, 40. Now the Hebrew word pr chok, which we render custom, signifies a statute or ordinance of lasting obligation. Thus it is peculiarly applied to the law which God gave by Moses in the following passage: “Behold I have taught you statutes (D'p chukkim) and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep, therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes," Dp col-hachukkim, Deut. iv, 6, and so in many other places. This custom, therefore, of the daughters of Israel, seems to be intended for an annual rite in perpetuum, and not that they went yearly to talk with her as long as she lived.

It is highly probable, that Homer grounded his fable of Agamemnon's sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia on some tradition of Jephthah's sacrifice. And indeed the name Iphigenia seems to be a corruption of Jephthigenia, the daughter of Jephthah. Ovid, who has dressed up the story in his way, makes Diana put a stag in her room, and seems therefore to have blended the tradition of Abraham's sacrifice with that of

Jephthah*. But to return to the consideration of the Hebrew government.

We have distinguished the time in which God exercised a special authority over the people of Israel into four periods, and are now upon the second of them, namely, from their entrance into Canaan to the captivity. We have gone through the government of the judges. We proceed now to the reign of the kings.

This continued, saith Godwin, from Saul to the captivity of Babylon, about 530 years. But as, in the course of this work, we shall have a chapter by itself concerning the Jewish kings, I shall only for the present observe, that they were of two sorts, those that reigned over the whole Hebrew nation, who were only three, Saul, David, and Solomon, and those that reigned over some of the tribes only.

And these were,

1st, The kings of the house of David, who were twenty in number, if you reckon Athaliah the queen, who usurped the throne for six years, after the death of her son Ahaziah, 2 Kings xi. These kings reigned over the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, until Nebuchadnezzar carried Zedekiah, the last of them, captive unto Babylon. They took their title from the larger tribe, and were called kings of Judah.

2dly, The kings of Israel, who reigned over the other ten tribes from the time of their rebellion against Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, to the Assyrian captivity. These kings were of several different families, and were in all nineteen, from Jeroboam, the first, to Hosea, the last.

We now proceed to the third period, which takes in the time of the captivity, and concludes with the end of it.

As the Hebrew nation was divided into two distinct kingdoms, so each kingdom suffered a distinct captivity; the one is called the Assyrian, the other the Babylonish.

The Assyrian captivity was that of the ten tribes, which was begun in the reign of Pekah, king of Israel, when Tiglathpileser, king of Assyria, conquered a part of his country, and carried away the people captive to Assyria, 2 Kings. xv, 29. It was afterwards completed by Salmanassar, who took Sa

+ Vid. Capelli Diatrib. de voto Jephth. per totum; apud criticos sacros in Jud. xi, and Mr. Hallet's note on Heb. ix, 32.

maria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel, after three years siege, and went up through the land, and carried away the residue of the people captive into Assyria, 2 Kings xvii, 5, 6.

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The people of the kingdom of Israel had greatly corrupted the worship of God, and had been very much given to idolatry, ever since their separation from the kingdom of Judah. It is said, that they walked in the statutes of the heathen, and served idols," ver. 8, 12. And it is no wonder, therefore, that, when they were removed into Assyria, multitudes of them fell in with the idolatrous worship and customs of that country, becoming mixed with the Assyrians, and in time losing the very name of Jews and Israelites, insomuch that the greater part of the ten tribes, as a peculiar people and visible church of God, were quite lost in that captivity.

The Babylonish captivity was that of the kingdom of Judah, or of the two tribes who adhered to the house of David. It was begun by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, in the reign of Jehoiakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar "bound in fetters, to carry him to Babylon. And he also carried away some of the vessels belonging to the house of the Lord, to furnish his own temple in Babylon," 2 Chron. xxxvi, 6, 7. From hence begun the period of the seventy years' captivity. The people, buoyed up by their false prophets, were induced to believe, that these sacred vessels should be shortly brought again from Babylon, but Jeremiah assured them of the contrary, and that all the remaining vessels should be carried after them, Jer. xxvii, 16, 17, 21, 22. Accordingly about nine years afterwards, in the reign of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar made a second descent against Judah, and "besieged Jerusalem, and took it, and carried away the king, and all the nobles, and the great men, and officers, and ten thousand captives, to Babylon, with all the treasure of the house of the Lord, and the treasure of the king's house; and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon had made for the temple," 2 Kings xxiv, 10-16. But the word rp vaikatzetz is not well rendered "cut in pieces," since it appears, by a passage in Daniel, that these vessels were preserved entire, for "Belshazzar, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank wine in them," Dan. v, 2. The verb p katzatz signifies" to cut off;" as in the following passage of the second book of Samuel,

"David commanded his young men, and they slew them, that is, Rechab and Baanah, the murderers of Ishbosheth, and cut off, yp vaikatzetzu, their hands and their feet," &c., 2 Sam. iv, 12*; where it is used in the same form as it is in the passage before us, in which, therefore, it can mean no more than the vessels being cut off from their stands or bases, and taken away from the temple.

Again, eleven years after this, in the reign of Zedekiah, Nebuzar-adan, the Babylonian general, came and sacked and burnt Jerusalem, and the temple, and carried away the remainder of the sacred vessels, together with all the Jews who remained in the country (except some poor people, whom he left to till the land), captives into Babylon, 2 Kings xxv, 8, &c.

Four years after this, which was the twenty-third of the seventy, or from the beginning of the Babylonish captivity, Nebuzar-adan again invaded the land of Israel; and seized upon all the Jews he could meet with, and sent them captive to Babylon, Jer. lii, 30. This was done probably in revenge for the murder of Gedaliah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had made governor of the land, but whom Ishmael killed, Jer. xli, 2. Upon the murder of Gedaliah, Johanan, the son of Kareah, and many of the people that were left, fled into Egypt for fear of the king of Babylon, ver. 16-18; chap. xliii, 4-7. So that all the Jews that Nebuzar-adan now found, and made captive, amounted to no more than seven hundred and fifty persons. Thus was the captivity of Judah completed, and the land was made desolate, none of its former inhabitants being now left in it.

But though the captivity of Israel, and of Judah, had different beginnings, the former commencing an hundred years before the latter; yet they ended together, when Cyrus, the king of Persia, having conquered both the Chaldeans and Assyrians, and obtained universal monarchy, issued out a decree for restoring the Jews to their own land, and for rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple, Ezra i, 1-3. This is that famous Cyrus who, one hundred and forty years before the temple was destroyed, and two hundred years before he was

* So, also, 2 Kings xvi, 17, Ahaz "cut off" the borders of the bases, &c.; and chap. xviii, 16, Hezekiah "cut off" the gold from the doors, &c. Hallet's Notes and Discourses, vol. i, p. 1.