ish empire, been the mistress of the East, and domineered over all the countries round about them, could not bear the subjection which they were fallen under to the Persians, especially after they had removed the imperial seat of the empire from Babylon to Shushan ; for that much diminished the grandeur, pride, and wealth of the place, which they thought they could no other way again retrieve, but by setting themselves up against the Persians, under a king of their own, in the same manner as they had formerly done, under Nabopolassar, against the Assyrians. And therefore, taking the advantage of the revolution, which happened in the Persian empire, first on the death of Cambyses, and after on the slaying of the Magians, they began to lay in all manner of provisions for the war; and, after they had covertly done this for four years together, till they had fully stored the city for many years to come, in the fifth year they broke out into an open revolt, which drew Darius upon them, with all his forces, to besiege the city. In the beginning of the third year of Darius, we learn from the prophet Zechariah, that m the whole empire was then in peace; and therefore the revolt could not then have happened: and the message of Sharezer and Regem-melech from Babylon," in the fourth year of his reign, proves the same for that year also; and therefore it could not be till the fifth year that this war broke out. that this war broke out. As soon as the Babylonians saw themselves begirt by such an army, as they could not cope with in the field, they turned their thoughts wholly to the supporting of themselves in the siege in order whereto, they took a resolution the most desperate and barbarous that ever any nation practised. For, to make their provisions last the longer, they agreed to cut off all unnecessary mouths among them; and therefore, drawing together all the women and children, they strangled them all, whether wives, sisters, daughters, or young children, unless for the wars, excepting only, that every man was allowed to save one of his wives which he best loved, and a maid

servant to do the work of the house. And hereby was very signally fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah against them, in which he foretold, P "That two things should come to them in a moment, in one day, the loss of children and widowhood; and that these should come upon them in their perfection, for the multitude of their sorceries, and the great abundance of their enchantments." And in what greater perfection could these calamities come upon them, than when they themselves, thus upon themselves, became the executioners of them? And in many other particulars did God then execute his vengeance upon this wicked and abominable city, which was foretold by several of the prophets; and the Jews were as often warned to come out of the place, before the time of its approach, that they might not be involved in it. And especially the prophet Zechariah, about two years before, sent them a call from God, that is, "to Zion, that dwelt with the daughter of Babylon, to flee and come forth from that land," that they might be delivered from the plague which God was going to inflict upon it. And when Sharezer and Regem-melech returned to Babylon, no doubt, they carried back with them, from this prophet, a repetition of the same call: and although it be no where said, that they paid obedience to it, and so saved themselves, yet we may take it for certain, that they did, and, by seasonably removing from Babylon before the siege began, avoided partaking of the calamities of it; for almost all the prophecies concerning this heavy judgment upon Babylon speaking of it as the vengeance of God upon them for their cruel dealings with his people, when they were delivered into their hands, and they all at the same time promising peace, mercy, and favour, to all that were of his people, and particularly such a promise having been sent them but the year before by Sharezer and Regemmelech, it is utterly inconsistent with the whole tenour of these sacred predictions, that any of the Jewish nation should be sufferers with the Babylonians in this

p Isaiah xlvii, 9. r Zech. ii, 6-9.

q Isaiah xlviii, 20. Jer. 1, 8; li, 6, 9, 45. s Zech. viii.

An. 516.

Darius 6

war; and therefore we may assuredly infer, that they were all gone out of this place before this war began. Darius having lain before Babylon a year and eight months, at length, toward the end of the sixth year of his reign, he took it by the stratagem of Zopyrus, one of his chief commanders: for he, having cut off his nose and ears, and mangled his body all over with stripes, fled in this condition to the besieged; where, feigning to have suffered all this by the cruel usage of Darius, he grew thereby so far into their confidence, as at length to be made the chief commander of their forces; which trust he made use of to deliver the city to his master, which could scarce have been any other way taken: for the walls, by reason of their height and strength, made the place impregnable against all storms, batteries, and assaults; and it being furnished with provisions for a great many years, and having also" large quantities of void ground within the city, from the cultivation of which it might annually be supplied with much more, it could never have been starved into a surrender; and therefore at length it must have wearied and worn out Darius, and all his army, had it not been thus delivered into his hands by this stratagem of Zopyrus, for which he deservedly rewarded him with the highest honours he could heap on him all his life after. As soon as Darius was master of the place, he took away all their one hundred gates, and beat down y their walls from two hundred cubits (which was their former height) to fifty cubits; and of these walls only Strabo, and other afterwriters are to be understood, when they describe the walls of Babylon to be no more than fifty cubits high. And as to the inhabitants, after having given them for a spoil to his Persians, who had been before their servants, according to the prophecy of Zechariah, ii, 9, and impaled three thousand of the most guilty and active of them in the revolt, he pardoned all the rest.

t Herodotus, lib. 3. Justin, lib. 1, c. 10. Polyænus, lib. 7.

u Quintus Curtius, lib. 5, c. 1. Per 90 stadia habitatur, cætera serunt cofuntque, ut si externa vis ingruat, obsessis alimenta ex ipsius urbis solg sub ministrentur.

x Jer. li, 58. Herodot. ibid.

y Jer. 1, 15; li, 44, 58. Herodot. ibid.

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z Strabo, lib. 16.

But, by reason of the destruction they had made of their women in the beginning of the siege, he was forced to send for fifty thousand of that sex out of the other provinces of the empire, to supply them with wives, without which the place must soon have become depopulated for want of propagation.

And here it is to be observed, that the punishment of Babylon kept pace with the restoration of Judah and Jerusalem, according to the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah, xxv, 12, 13, whereby he foretold, that "when the seventy years of Judah's captivity should be accomplished, God would punish the king of Babylon, and that nation for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and would make it a perpetual desolation, and would bring upon that land all the words which he had pronounced against it." For accordingly, when the restoration of Judah began, in the first of Cyrus, after the expiration of the first seventy years, that is, from the fourth of Jehoiakim to the first of Cyrus, then began Babylon's punishment, in being conquered and subjected to the Persians, in the same manner as they had conquered and subjected the Jews to them in the beginning of the said seventy years. And, after the expiration of the second seventy years, that is, from the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar, when Judah and Jerusalem were thoroughly desolated, to the fourth of Darius, when the restoration of both was completed, then the desolation of Babylon was also in a great measure completed in the devastation which was then brought upon it by Darius. In the first part of their punishment, their king was slain, and their city taken; and thenceforth, from being a the lady of kingdoms, and mistress of all the East, it became subject to the Persians. And whereas before it had been the metropolis of a great empire, this honour was now taken from it, and the imperial seat removed from thence to Shushan or Susa (for this seems to have been done in the first year of Cyrus' reign over the whole empire,) and Babylon thenceforth, instead of having a king, had only a deputy residing there, who governed it as a province of the Persian empire. And at the

a Isa. xlvii, 5:

same time that the city was thus brought under, the country was desolated and destroyed by the inundation that was caused, by turning of the river on the taking of the city, which hath been already spoken of, and thereon it became a possession for the bittern, and pools of water, as the prophet Isaiah foretold, chap. xiv, 23. "And the sea came up upon Babylon, and she was covered with the multitude of the waves thereof," according as Jeremiah prophesied hereof, chap. li, 42. And, in the second part of their punishment, on Darius' taking the place, all that calamity and devastation was brought upon it, which hath been already spoken of; and from that it did never any more recover itself, but languished a while, and at length ended, according to the words of Jeremiah, in a perpetual desolation.

An. 515.

Darius 7.

In the sixth year of Darius according to the Jewish account, and on the third day of the twelfth month, called the month of Ådar (which answered to part of the third, and part of the fourth month of the Babylonish year, and consequently was in the seventh year of Darius, according to the Babylonish account,) the building of the temple at Jerusalem was finished, and the dedication of it was celebrated by the priests and Levites, and all the rest of the congregation of Israel, with great joy and solemnity. And, among other sacrifices then offered, there was a sin-offering for all Israel of twelve he-goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel; which is a farther addition of proof to what hath been above said, that, on the return of Judah and Benjamin from the Babylonish captivity, some also of each of the other tribes of Israel returned with them out of Assyria, Babylon, and Media, whither they had been before carried, and, joining with them in the rebuilding of the temple (to which they had originally an equal right,) partaked also in the solemnity of this dedication; otherwise there is no reason why any such offering should have been then made in their behalf. But the most of them that returned being of the tribe of Judah, that swallowed up the names of all the rest; for from this time the whole people of Israel, of what tribe soever they

b Ezra vi, 15-18.