houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.

And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima.

And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

So they feared the LORD, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.

They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel;

With whom the LORD had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them:

But the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice.

And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore; and ye shall not fear other gods.

And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear other gods.

But the LORD your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.

Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.

COMMENT. While the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh had been transplanted to Gozam and Media, their territory stood empty till Esarhaddon filled it by strangers, like themselves uprooted from a country they had defended against Assyria.

Esarhaddon, one of the greatest conquerors who had ever come forth from Nineveh, had lately conquered and subdued Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon, the king whose ambassadors had tempted Hezekiah to his display. So Babylonians were among the new inhabitants of Samaria, where perhaps the Great King wished to place people who should have nothing in common with the men of Judah.

Sepharvaim, or Sippara, was also on the Euphrates, Cutha was probably in Media, and Ava, or Ivah, was Phoenician, while

Hamath was an old Syrian city with which Israel had often been at war. Babylon, Sepharia, and Cutha are mentioned by Sargon in the roll of his conquests; and in another inscription he says, "I destroyed the tribes of Shamudi and Adidi, and placed the remnant of them in the city of Samaria." These were two Arab tribes, and thus did the cruel worldly policy of the Assyrians devise means to keep a great extent of lands in subjection by filling them up with people who not only did not care for the country as a home, but were all strangers to one another in speech, habits, and religion, and so would hardly join together against their tyrant. And now Samaria, which would not worship God in His holiness, was defiled with varieties of idols. But still the land was holy. Mounts Ebal and Gerizim still witnessed to the cursings and blessings, and Shiloh had once been the sanctuary. So to teach even these strangers to adore the LORD in His own land, they were allowed to suffer from the attacks of lions, until they believed that it was in consequence of not worshipping the God of the land. The heathens supposed each country to be owned by gods of its own, and thought that their neglect offended the God of Samaria. So they sent to Sargon for priests to teach them the way of adoring the God of Israel, and he appears to have sent them some of the priests of the high places or of the calves, under whom they learnt to pay some sort of worship to JEHOVAH, but only as the tutelary deity of Samaria. None of them, except probably the Arabs, who never were idolatrous, abstained from importing the idols of their own nations. The Babylonian "Succoth Benoth" (or "Tents of the Daughters") are said to have been an idol in the form of a hen and chickens, in honour of the constellation of the Pleiades, which we know from Job, and from Amos, to have been so much honoured in the East. Nergal" was the war god, whose idol had a cock's head, and whose star was the planet Mars. Nibhaz" was said to have been like a dog, "Tartak" like an ass, "Ashima " was Syrian, and like a goat. "Melech," or "Malek” means king;" and these gods of Sepharvaim were thus named "the mighty king" and the fire king," and like Moloch, the cruel Phoenician god, received sacrifices of infants in the fire!

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How piteous to think of this being the fate of the goodly land that Jacob and Joseph loved so well, where Joshua had proclaimed

the Law, and Deborah had sat under her palm-tree, where Elijah's awful wonders and Elisha's miracles of mercy had been wrought, and where the voice of the aged Hosea had scarcely yet died away. But it is the great warning that there is a time when God's mercy turns to judgment, and if there be no repentance He takes away His Light, and for ever.

LESSON LXXXVIII.

MANASSEH'S REPENTANCE AND AMON'S REIGN.

B.C. 679.-2 CHRON. xxxiii. 10-24.

And the LORD spake to Manasseh, and to his people: but they would not hearken.

Wherefore the LORD brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.

And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,

And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God.

Now after this he built a wall without the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entering in at the fish gate, and compassed about Ophel, and raised it up a very great height, and put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah.

And he took away the strange gods, and the idol out of the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the LORD, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city.

And he repaired the altar of the LORD, and sacrificed thereon peaceofferings and thank-offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the LORD God of Israel.

Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high places, yet unto the LORD their God only.

Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer unto his God, and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the LORD God of Israel, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel.

His prayer also, and how God was intreated of him, and all his sins, and his trespass, and the places wherein he built high places, and set up groves and graven images, before he was humbled: behold, they are written among the sayings of the seers.

So Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his own house and Amon his son reigned in his stead.

Amon was two and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned two years in Jerusalem.

But he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as did Manasseh his father for Amon sacrificed unto all the carved images which Manasseh his father had made, and served them;

And humbled not himself before the LORD, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; but Amon trespassed more and more.

And his servants conspired against him, and slew him in his own house. But the people of the land slew all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.

COMMENT. It was not long before Manasseh's sins and those of his people brought punishment on them. They had become the allies of Egypt and Esarhaddon—or, as he is called in the inscriptions, Assurbanipal, who was still reigning over Nineveh, conquered Egypt, then took Sidon and burnt it; and, lastly, attacked Jerusalem. The present king had disdained the care that kept it safe in his father's time, and it easily fell before the Assyrians. Manasseh himself was taken 66 'among the thorns," probably as he tried to escape. And he was carried as a prisoner to Babylon, which, as we have seen, Esarhaddon had lately subdued, and as a chained and fettered captive was taken to the very city whence the ambassadors had come to whom his father had boasted! "I counted among my vassals," says Esarhaddon, in his inscription, "twelve kings of Syria beyond the mountains." Minasi, king of Judah, is in the list.

But the prayers of holy Hezekiah and Isaiah had not gone up to God in vain. The son of Hezekiah and Hephzibah was not to be utterly lost. The teachings of his early boyhood came back to his mind, and in his prison he prayed and repented, and the God of all mercies forgave him. The wicked man turned away from his wickedness and saved his soul alive. After, we know not how long a time, God brought about his release, most likely when about B.C. 668, Esarhaddon fell sick, and gave up his dominions, all but his favourite city of Babylon, to his eldest son. Manasseh went back to his kingdom, and tried to make a reformation, by overthrowing his idolatrous altars and high places, and recalling the people to serve God, while he took measures for their defence by building a new wall, enclosing Mount Zion, and enclosing Ophel, the hill to the north of the Temple; but the evil he had done could not be so

easily undone; he could not recall his people from their evil ways, nor bring them back from the high-place worship; and though his care may have had some effect on his infant grandson, his son Amon was hopelessly corrupted. We may repent, but the harm we have done can never be undone. And as a sad and repentant man Manasseh died, and apparently judged himself unworthy to rest in the sepulchre of David, for he was buried in the garden of his own house.

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The Book of Kings" and the "Books of the Seers," to which the Book of Chronicles refers for the rest of his history, were pro·bably the materials from which Ezra put together the Books of Kings as we have them. There Manasseh's captivity and repentance are left out, whence some have inferred that he relapsed into sin; but the unhappy state into which he had brought his kingdom, and which could never be repaired, quite accounts for the summing up his reign, as if the whole of it had been evil. The merciful promise written by Ezekiel a few generations later, surely applies to him (Ezek. xviii.) :—

But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the LORD God and not that he should return from his ways, and live?

There is a beautiful prayer in the Apocrypha, said to be Manasseh's, which was in the Greek version of the Bible, but not the Hebrew, and therefore is not in the canon of Scripture. Manasseh's son Amon only survived him for two wretched and disgraceful years, during which he seems to have allied himself with Egypt, though not attacked by Assyria, and to have allowed his men to serve in the Egyptian armies. After two years of violence and idolatry, he was slain by conspirators when only twenty-four years old.