strengthened as he was by God, to whom he prayed daily, triumphed over all these artifices, and enabled him to complete the building of the wall: to celebrate which event he called the people together, and having caused Ezra the priest to read to them a portion of the law of Moses, dismissed them to their homes, that they might keep the day as one holy to the Lord, by feasting and gladness, and charitable acts. A short time afterwards he appointed another general assembly, and ordained not a festival, but a day of fasting and humiliation, that they might remember how exceedingly as a nation they had provoked the Lord, and might entreat him for the future to look upon them with an eye of favour, entering on their parts into a solemn engagement to walk thenceforward according to God's law, abstaining from the practices which he had forbidden, and cheerfully contributing out of their worldly substance whatsoever might be needful for his worship and service. Having effected these important improvements in the condition of his countrymen, Nehemiah returned for a while to Persia, but though not absent long, he found that the cessation of his vigilant superintendence, even for a little while, had produced an injurious effect upon the behaviour of that fickle people: various abuses, some of which provoked the indignant rebukes of the prophet Malachi, began to reappear among them; the sabbath was again violated, the altar and ministers of God were defrauded of their accustomed offerings, strange women were taken to wife, and connexions were thus formed, even in the priestly family, with the enemies of Israel.* All these corruptions Nehemiah on his second visit set himself to Josephus, in his work on Jewish Antiquities, B. xi. ch. 8, relates that Manasses, son of Jaddus the high priest, married the daughter of Sanaballetes the Cuthean, Satrap of Samaria, and having abandoned Jerusalem, became the priest of a new temple root out, with so much zeal and success, that he was enabled, in all the boldness of an approving conscience, to approach his God in prayer, and to say, "Remember me, O my God, for good concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof."* This worthy man was the last civil governor appointed in Judea by the Persian kings-the Jews were left to the government of their high-priests, unassisted hereafter by their prophets, who ceased at the death of Malachi, with whose prophecies of the Christ to come, and of his forerunner John the Baptist, the volume of the Old Testament is concluded. The events which occurred in the interval between that and the commencement of the New, as recorded in history, and many of them foretold by Daniel, are of sufficient importance to form the subject of a separate chapter. which his father-in-law built for him upon mount Gerizim. He connects these events with the reign of the last Darius, and the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great; it is more probable, however, that they took place in the time of Darius the Second, and that this Manasses is the person mentioned in Neh. xiii. 28, as the son-in-law of Sinballat the Horonite. We learn also from him (b. xii. ch. 5,) that when Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews, they, fearing the like infliction, disclaimed all connexion with them, adopted the heathen rites, and caused their temple to be publicly dedicated to the Hellenic Jupiter. This temple was afterwards destroyed by John Hircanus; and the concurrence of all these causes produced that state of bitter hatred towards each other, in which we find the two nations when Christ came into the world. See Ecclus. 1. 25, 26. Neh. xiii. 14. CHAP. XXXIX. CONCLUSION. CON ONCERNING the interval of time which existed between the end of Nehemiah's government in Judea, and the nativity of our Saviour Christ, no information is afforded us in Scripture, excepting in one, and that a most remarkable manner; namely, in prophetic declarations of the principal events which were to take place within that period, and were made known to Daniel during the Jews' captivity at Babylon. That whatever was foretold with relation to these times in the book of Daniel, was most exactly fulfilled, is made known to us, not only by various heathen writers, but also by the Jew Josephus, who wrote his history about the time of the second destruction of Jerusalem; and by the authors of the two books of the Maccabees, who, although not to be ranked among the inspired writers, communicate to us much interesting and important information. For about an hundred years after the death of Nehemiah, the Jews remained subject to the Persian kings; their extensive empire was then suddenly and violently overthrown by the young king of Macedon, Alexander, surnamed the Great, who, having conquered the Persian armies in several battles, subdued their whole country up to the very borders of India; and having then given himself up to luxury and intemperance, died in the flower of his age, a marked instance how frail and perishable all human greatness is, and how much easier it is to conquer nations and kingdoms, than to gain the mastery, without God's grace assisting, over the pride of life, and the temptations of the world and the flesh. Let us pray constantly for that grace, that we may fight the good fight of faith, and thank God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The mighty acts of Alexander, and the short duration of his power, were foretold in the visions of Daniel. The Macedonian empire is there exhibited under the image of an he-goat, coming from the west, having a notable horn between his eyes, and rushing with fury against a ram with two horns, representing the united kingdoms of Media and Persia, whom he cast down to the ground, and trampled under his feet. The goat, having done this, waxed very great; and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; by which circumstance the death of Alexander is clearly pointed out, as is also the division of his kingdom among four of his princes, by the springing up of four other horns, in the place of that which had been broken. "Four kingdoms," says the explanation of the vision, " shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power. Of these four kingdoms, two, being distant from the Jews, exercised little influence upon the condition of that people; but with the other two, namely, Syria on the north, and Egypt on the south, it was strictly connected, being at various times reduced under the dominion of both of them. The first who got possession of Judea, in spite of the resistance of the people, was Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who carried away from Jerusalem an hundred thousand captives, and settled them in Egypt. Those who dwelt there, as they increased in multitude, became by degrees more familiar with the Greek language than with their own, and accordingly for their use the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament were translated into Greek; a translation which, called the Septuagint, from the * Dan. viii. 22. supposed number of seventy persons who made it, was most extensively used by the Jews, not only in foreign countries, but even in Judea itself, and was the means of making many of the heathens acquainted with the history of God's people, and with his holy law. Fifty years after this event the Egyptians lost Judea, which was taken from them by Antiochus the Syrian, "the king of the north," as the rulers of Syria are called in Daniel's prophecies, who came against them "with a great army and with much riches."* This Antiochus, surnamed the Great, being dead, was succeeded by his son Seleucus, called in the prophecy “ a raiser of taxes:"† and that he was so, to a most oppressive extent, appears from an account in the book of Maccabees, of his sending Heliodorus his treasurer to Jerusalem, with orders to bring away all the money which was laid up in the temple of God; an intent which, according to the author of that book, was frustrated in a miraculous manner, by the appearance in the temple of a horse and his rider, who struck Heliodorus to the ground under his feet. The next king of Syria, called Epiphanes, according to the prophecy was to be "a vile person, who should obtain the kingdom by flatteries,"§ and overcome his adversaries rather by deceit than by force of arms,- -a character which, however hateful violence may be, is one more hateful still--and indeed Epiphanes united in his what was most abominable in both of these; for, having afterwards gained some advantages over the Egyptians, and being prevented by fear of the Roman power from following them up, he turned his wrath against the defenceless Jews, and, not contented with plundering and desecrating their temple, setting up the * Dan. xi. 13. 2 Macc. iii. + Ver. 20. E E |