several years after his accession, he withheld the annual payment of twenty talents due to the Egyptian treasury. The government of Ptolemy having sent a peremptory message to demand the arrears, Joseph, the nephew of Onias, was despatched on an embassy of submission and pacification. He had the address to obtain from the king, on the stipulation of a specified annual payment, the privilege of collecting all his taxes in Judea and the neighbouring prov inces, with the command of a military force to coerce their payment, a measure which became the source of long and vexatious discontents.

With the accession, nearly at the same time, of Antiochus the Great, brother of the late monarch, to the throne of Syria, and of Ptolemy Philopator, son of Euergetes, to that of Egypt (namely, the former in the year 223, the latter in the year 221 B. C.), the elements of disturbance to the tranquillity which had been long enjoyed by the rival states were set in motion. The character of the Egyptian kings was now reversed. The new monarch appears to have been called Philopator in derision; he is reputed to have murdered his father, as well as others of his family. The attempts of the Syrians on his dominions, which began soon after his accession, were not fortunate. during his reign. Antiochus possessed himself of Cole-Syria by the treachery of its governor, and obtained some other partial successes; but experienced a total defeat in the year 217, and, the following year, renounced by treaty all his claims, professedly founded on the partition of the year 301, to Palestine and its neighbouring districts, employing his arms thenceforward, still without speedy success, in other quar

ters.

Prematurely exhausted by his vices, Ptolemy died in

the year 204, and was succeeded by his son, to whom was given the surname of Epiphanes, illustrious, and to whom Sosibius was appointed guardian by the sol diery. Taking advantage of the weakness of a minority, Antiochus possessed himself again of Cole-Syria, adding to it now Phoenicia and Palestine. The Egyptians had recourse, in this exigency, to the Roman pow. er, which had become formidable and widely known, since the recent termination of the Second Punic War, under the conduct of Scipio. The Senate, solicited to undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, sent Lepidus to represent them in that office. The message which he despatched to Antiochus, to respect the dominions of the Roman people's royal ward, having met little respect on that monarch's part, an army marched in the year 199, under Scopas, to enforce it. He recovered the lost provinces; but in the following year Antiochus brought them again under his government; and this with the good-will of the Jews, who, disgusted probably with the management of their last Egyptian governor, aided the Syrian troops in dispos sessing the Egyptians of their fortress on Mount Zion. By a treaty of peace, negotiated in the year 197, Antiochus even retained the fruits of his last conquests, stipulating at the same time to give his daughter, when of full age, in marriage to the young Ptolemy, with these territories for her dowry.

The truce was of short duration, and the Romans, agreeably to their now well-developed policy of assuming the concerns and troubles of all nations, took on themselves the chief burden of the long war which followed. At length, in the year 188 B. C., they found themselves in a condition to dictate to Antiochus ignominious terms of pacification. The following year he was slain in a popular tumult at Elymais, in Persia,

occasioned by an attempt to plunder the treasures of its temple to supply his exhausted coffers.

He was succeeded by his son Seleucus Philopater, of whose reign very little is known, the best authorities failing in respect to it. Ptolemy Epiphanes died by poison, six years later, having, in the course of a dishonorable reign, done nothing which it falls within our purpose to observe. His successor was his son, surnamed Philometor, who, being a child of six years age, was placed under the guardianship of his mother Cleopatra.

of

The period beginning with the accessions of Antiochus the Great and Ptolemy Philopater, and terminating with the death of Seleucus Philopater, was in great part one of unusual disturbance to the Jews. During the wars of Antiochus, they necessarily experienced their full share of the evils of such a state of things, and under the government of Ptolemy Philopater they had many and weighty occasions of discontent. Having come to their temple to sacrifice, he is said to have endeavoured to force himself into the Holy of Holies, and on one occasion of dissatisfaction on the king's part, he is reported to have massacred forty thousand of their countrymen. Towards Antiochus, on the contrary, they appear to have been uniformly well disposed, and to have received, in their turn, repeated marks of friendship at his hands. Josephus has preserved two important decrees of his in their favor.*

In the year 217 B. C., Onias the Second was succeeded in the high-priesthood by Simon the Second, and he in 195 B. C. by his son Onias the Third. From the fact related, that, in the year 187, Joseph, the farm

VOL. III.

* "Antiq. Jud.," Lib. xii. cap. 3, §§ 3, 4.

15

er of the revenues before named, sent his son Hyrcanus to Ptolemy Epiphanes to congratulate him on the birth of a son, it appears that, before that time, probably by the treaty with the Romans in the year 188, or by virtue of the marriage settlement in the year 197, the possession of Palestine had reverted to Egypt; but it appears again to have been transferred to the Syri ans before the death of that prince in 180; at all events, we find it already in their possession shortly after this time. In 176 B. C., Simon, governor of the temple, in consequence of some dissatisfaction with the high-priest Onias, betook himself to the governor of Cœle-Syria under Seleucus, pretending to acquaint him with the existence of a deposit of great treasures in the temple. The king sent Heliodorus, one of his cour tiers, to ascertain the fact, who, according to the rela tion in the Second Book of Maccabees and Josephus, was, while trespassing on the sacred precincts, stricken to the ground and scourged by the supernatural attendants of an armed and mounted angel.

Heliodorus, returning to his master, entered into a plot against him, hoping to usurp his throne, in the absence of his son Demetrius, lately sent to Rome as a hostage. Having removed Seleucus by poison, his design was frustrated by the sudden arrival of the brother of the monarch, Antiochus, whom his nephew had been sent to Rome to release, and who, hearing at Athens, on his way home, what had befallen, made all speed to secure his own advantage of it. This is that Antiochus who acted so wickedly important a part in the succeeding Jewish history. His flatterers gave him the surname of Epiphanes, or illustrious. Others, more candid, and more just, called him Epimanes, the madman.

LECTURE XLIV.

AGE AND PERSONAL NOTICES OF ISAIAH.-CASE OF INSCRIPTIONS, AND OTHER NOTES, PREFIXED AND ATTACHED TO THE BIBLICAL POEMS. ARRANGEMENT OF THE POEMS IN THEIR PRESENT ORDER. - PROBABILITY OF MISTAKE OF LATER COMMENTS FOR PARTS OF THE ORIGINAL WRITING. - REASONS FOR BELIEVING THAT THE COLLECTION OF POEMS, AS AT PRESENT EXTANT, WAS NOT ARRANGED BY ISAIAH, AND THAT IT HAS SUFFERED INTERPOLATION. -QUESTION OF AUTHORSHIP OF THE RESPECTIVE PARTS AN OPEN QUESTION, NOT DETERMINED BY THE TItle, NOR BY ANY NEW TESTAMENT AUTHORITY. ANNOTATIONS ON THE POEM CONTAINED IN THE FIRST CHAPTER. INSCRIPTION TO THE POEM COMPRISED IN THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH CHAPTERS, and ReMARKS THEREUPON.- ALLEGORY OF AN UNFRUITFUL VINEYARD, IN THE FIFTH CHAPTER.-VISION OF GOD IN THE SIXTH. INTRODUCTION TO THE SEVENTH CHAPTER.ISAIAH'S INTERVIEW WITH AHAZ.- DENUNCIATIONS AND PROMISES IN THE EIGHTH CHAPTER, WITH REFERENCE TO THE EXPECTED PRINCELY MESSIAH.-REBUKE OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM IN THE NINTH CHAPTER, WITH THREATS OF AN ASSYRIAN INVASION. HYMN OF TRIUMPH OVER THE DISCOMFITURE OF THE AssyRIAN ARMY, IN THE TENTH, ELEVENTH, AND TWELFTH CHAPTERS, WITH A PROSPECT OF THE UNIVERSAL REIGN OF THE MESSIAH, AND OF GREATNESS, FELICITY, AND UNDISTURBED PEACE FOR ISRAEL AND JUDAH.

THE inscription prefixed to the book which bears. the name of Isaiah represents him as having lived in the kingdom of Judah, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Uzziah died in the year 758, and Hezekiah ascended the throne in the year 726, B. C. If Isaiah was thirty years old at the time when he began to appear as a preacher of righteousness,* he was of course sixty-two at the time of Hezekiah's accession. The Jews have a tradition, or a

* Is. vi. 1.