A. M. 3417, altar †, the Urim and Thummim +2, the spirit of prophecy +3, the Shechinah †, or Di&c. or 4825. vine Presence, the five great things for which the former temple was so renowned were 587, &c. lost and gone, and never to be recovered to this other. Ant Chris. or 586. This was a just matter of lamentation to those that had seen these singular tokens of the Divine favour in the former temple, and a discouragement of their proceeding with the building of the present; and therefore the prophet Haggai was sent to inform them, that all these wants and defects should be abundantly repaired by the coming of the Messiah, the true Shechinah of the Divine Majesty, in the time of the second temple: (a) “ I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory; the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of Hosts." 66 and the ark itself was as it were his footstool. The Hebrew word caphoreth, by being translated propitiatory, seems to imply, that from thence the Lord heard the vows and prayers of his people, and pardoned them their sins; and by its being at other times translated oracle, seems farther to imply, that from thence he manifested his will and pleasure, and gave responses to Moses. Calmet's Dictionary under the word. This fire came down from heaven, first upon the altar in the tabernacle, at the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, Levit. ix. 24. and afterwards it descended anew upon the altar in the temple of Solomon at its consecration, 2 Chron. vii. 1. and there it was constantly fed and maintained by the priests, day and night, in the same manner as it had been in the tabernacle. The Jews have a tradition that Jeremiah, foreseeing the destruction of the temple, took this fire, and hid it in a pit; but that, at the rebuilding of the temple, being brought again from thence, it revived upon the altar: but this is all a fiction; for the generality of them allow, that, at the destruction of the temple, it was extinguished; and, in the time of the second temple, nothing was made use of for all their burnt-offerings but common fire only. Prideaux's Connection. + Whether the Urim and Thummim lay in the high priest's breast plate itself, or only in the clearness and perfection of those oracular answers which he received from God, when he went to consult him upon any important matter, so it was, that having put on all his pontifical robes, and presented himself in the sanctuary before the Holy of Holies, he knew, by one means or other, most probably by an audible voice from the mercy seat, (which was within behind the veil) what the Divine pleasure was concerning the affair wherein he came to consult him. This was a singular privilege vouchsafed to the Jews; but it does not appear from the Sacred History, that there are any footsteps of consulting the Lord in this manner after the building of Solomon's temple to the time of its destruction; and, after its destruction, all are agreed, that this was never restored: so that there seems to be some reason for that maxim among the Jews, viz. that the Holy Spirit spake to the children of Israel, during the tabernacle, by Urim and Thummim; under the first temple by the prophets; and under the second by Bath-col, or a voice sent from heaven, such as was heard at the baptism of Jesus Christ, and at his transfiguration. Patrick's Commentary, and Calmet's Dictionary. +3 This, it must be owned, was not wholly withdrawn from the Jewish church in the time of the second temple. The prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, lived in this time and prophecied; but after their death, (which the rabbins say happened in one year) the prophetic spirit wholly ceased from among the Jews; [till it appeared again in Zechariah, the father of the Baptist, in Anna the prophetess, and in Simeon about the time of the birth of our Lord. See St Luke i. and ii.] Prideaux's Connection. +4 The Shechinah was a sensible token of God's presence among the Jews, which consisted of a visible cloud, resting over the mercy-seat, or cover of the ark of the covenant, just above the two cherubims that overshadowed it, Lev. xvi. 2. It there first appeared when Moses consecrated the tabernacle, and afterwards, at the consecration of the temple by Solomon, was translated thither; (vid. vol. i. p. 537.) and there continued, in the same visible manner, while the ark was in its proper place, either in the tabernacle or temple (but not while it was in movement, as it often was during the time of the tabernacle), till the Babylonians destroyed the temple, after which it never appeared more. Prideaux's Connection. (a) Hagg. ii. 7. 9. DISSERTATION I. OF THE PRIDE AND PUNISHMENT OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR. Daniel, and WHOEVER looks back upon the actions of Nebuchadnezzar, will easily perceive that From Jer. xl. he was a great and successful warrior; that, during (a) his father's lifetime, and while 7. to xlv. all he commanded the army as general under him, he drove the Egyptians (the only na- from Ezra i. tion that pretended at this time to rival the Babylonish monarchy) out of Syria and to v. Palestine, took Jerusalem, and carried away the people captive; and that, upon his own accession to the throne, he overcame the Phoenicians and Tyrians, over-ran all Egypt, and made it tributary, and returned home in triumph loaded with rich spoils. The Scripture however does not impute the occasion of his pride to the number of his conquests or the extent of his dominions, but to the state and magnificence of his royal city, in which (as it were at one view) he saw all the fruits of his martial toil, all the spoils of his many victories, and all the revenues of his vast empire, comprised and displayed in their utmost splendour. For while he was walking upon his palace at Babylon, very probably in his hanging-gardens, and in the uppermost terrace of them, from whence he might have a full prospect of the whole city, (b) "Is not this great Babylon (said he to himself) which I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty ?" Babylon was one of the most ancient cities of the world. It was founded by Nimrod, not long after the building of the famous tower of Babel, and was enlarged and beautified by Semiramis; but Nebuchadnezzar was the person who put the finishing hand to it, to make it one of the great wonders of the world: and therefore it may not be amiss to take a short survey of the works that are generally ascribed to him, in order to see what grounds he might have for this arrogant vaunt. 1. The whole city, which stood on a large flat, consisted properly of two parts, which were divided by the river Euphrates. That part of it which was on the east side of the river was the old city; the other, on the west side, was added by Nebuchadnezzar, and the whole was a square of an hundred and twenty furlongs, or fifteen miles every way, which made the whole circumference of it to be four hundred and eighty furlongs, or exactly threescore miles. Its walls, which were in thickness eighty-seven feet †, in height three hundred and fifty feet, and in compass four hundred and eighty furlongs, were all built of large bricks, cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime, which, issuing out of the earth in that country, binds stronger and firmer than lime, and in a short time grows harder than the very brick and stone which it cements. The city was encompassed without the walls with a vast ditch filled with water, and lined with bricks on both sides, after the manner of a counterscarp'; and as the earth (a) Vide Prideaux's Connection, vol. i. p. 62, 65, 66, and 92. (b) Dan. iv. 30. Some authors indeed will have them to have been no more than 50 cubits; but then they speak of them only as they were after the time of Darius Hy. staspes: For the Babylonians having revolted from him, and, in confidence of their strong walls, stood VOL. II. out against him in a long siege, after he had taken 8 U Ant. Chris. 587, &c. -6 A. M. 3417, which was dug out of it made the bricks wherewith the walls were built, we may judge of the depth and largeness of the ditch from the vast height and thickness of the walls. In the whole compass of the wall there were an hundred gates, i. e. five and twenty on each of the four sides, all made of solid brass; and between every two of these gates, at proper distances, were three towers, i. e. at the four corners of this great square, there were four towers between each of these corners, and the next gate on either side three towers; and every one of these towers was ten feet higher than the walls. Answering to every one of these gates, there was a street which led from gate to gate; so that there were fifty in all, each fifteen miles long; whereof twenty-five going one way, and twenty-five another, they crossed each other at right angles, and so cut the whole city out into six hundred and seventy-six squares, each of which was four furlongs and an half on every side, i. e. two miles and a quarter in compass; and round these, on every side towards the streets, stood the houses, all built three or four stories high, with fronts adorned with all manner of embellishments, and with yards and gardens thrown backwards. Besides these, there were four other streets, built only on one side, because they had the wall on the other, which went round the four sides of the city, and were all of them two hundred feet broad, though the other streets were but an hundred and fifty. Quite cross the city ran a branch of the river Euphrates, which entered in on the north, and went out on the south side; and over it, in the very middle of the city, was a bridge of a furlong in length, and thirty feet in breadth, built with wonderful art, to supply the defect of a foundation in the bottom of the river, which was all sandy. By this bridge a communication was kept up between the two parts of the city; and at the two extremities of it stood two palaces, the old one on the east, and new one on the west side of the river. The former of these took up four of the squares above mentioned, the other nine; and the temple of Belus, which stood near the old palace, took up another. 2. The temple of Belus, which was one of the most wonderful works in the world, was a square of a furlong on each side, i. e. half a mile in the whole compass; and consisted of eight towers (or what seemed like towers) built one above another. Herodotus tells us, that the way to go up it was by stairs, on the outside round it; from whence it seems most likely, that the whole ascent to it was by the benching-in, drawn in a sloping line, from the bottom to the top eight times round it, and that this made the appearance of eight towers one above another. The eight towers (as they are called) being like so many stories, were each of them +2 seventy five feet high, and in them were many great rooms with arched roofs, supported with pillars, which, after that the place was consecrated to an idolatrous use, were all made parts of the temple: but the most sacred part of all, and where the chiefest devotions were performed, was the up This is to be understood only of those parts of the walls where there was need of towers; for some parts of them, lying against morasses always full of water, where they could not be approached by any enemy, had no need of any towers at all for their de fence, and therefore in them there were none built: For, whereas the whole number of them amounted to no more than two hundred and fifty, had the saine uniform order been observed in their disposition all round, there must have been many more. Prideaux's Connection, anno 570. + Some, following the mistake of the Latin version of Herodotus, wherein the lowest of these towers is said to be a furlong thick and a furlong high, will have each of these towers to be a furlong high, which, amounting to a mile in the whole, is enough to shock any one's belief. But the Greek of Herodotus, which is the authentic text of that historian, says no such thing, but only that it was a furlong long and a furlong broad, without mentioning any thing of its height at all. And therefore Strabo, in his description of it, calling it a pyramid, because of its decreasing and benching-in at every tower, says of the whole, that it was a furlong high and a furlong on every side, which, without any farther addition, makes it exceed the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt, I mean for its height. For whereas the height of the tallest pyra mid was no more than 481 feet, that of the temple of Belus was 600, i. e. higher by 119 feet, which is one quarter of the whole. Prideaux's Connection, anno 570. permost story, over which, on the top of the tower, was an observatory, by the benefit From Jer. xl. of which the Babylonians advanced their knowledge in astronomy beyond all other 7 to xlv. all nations. Daniel, and from Ezra i. This tower, and the several rooms in it, were all that was called the temple of Belus, to v. until Nebuchadnezzar enlarged it with vast buildings, which were erected in a square' of two furlongs on every side, or a mile in circumference. On the outside of these was a wall enclosing the whole, in which were several gates leading to the temple, all made of solid brass, very probably from the brazen sea, the brazen pillars, and the other brazen vessels, which (a) from the temple of Jerusalem were carried to Babylon. This temple stood till the time of Xerxes: but he, on his return from the Grecian expedition, having first plundered it of its immense riches, among which were several images or statues of massy gold, demolished the whole of it, and laid it all in ruins. Alexander, upon his return to Babylon from his Indian expedition, proposed to have rebuilt it, and to that purpose set ten thousand men on work to clear away the rubbish : but his death, in a short time after, put an end to all further proceedings in that design, and (as modern travellers assure us) the knowledge of the very place where it once stood is at this time lost. 3. Near to this temple, on the east side of the river, as we said, stood the old palace of the kings of Babylon, four miles in circumference; and exactly over-against it, on the other side of the river, was the new palace built by Nebuchadnezzar, eight miles in compass, and surrounded with three walls one within another. But the most wonderful things belonging to it were the hanging gardens which Nebuchadnezzar made in complaisance to his wife Amylis*2, daughter of Astyages, king of Media: For she, retaining a strong inclination for the mountains and forests of her own country, desired to have something like it in Babylon, and therefore, to gratify her, he erected this monstrous work of vanity. These gardens contained a space of four hundred feet square, and were carried up aloft into the air, in the manner of several terraces, one above another, until the highest of them came up to the height of the walls of the city, that is to say, was three hundred and fifty feet high. The ascent was from terrace to terrace, by stairs ten feet wide, and the whole pile was sustained by vast arches built upon arches, one above another, and strengthened by a wall, surrounding it on every side, of two and twenty feet in thickness On the top of the arches were first laid large flat stones sixteen feet long and four broad; over them was a layer of reed, mixed with a great quantity of bitumen; over this were two rows of brick closely cemented together by plaster; over these were laid thick sheets of lead, and all this to keep the moisture of the mould from draining away; and then, lastly, upon this lead was laid such a large quantity of earth heaped together, as afforded depth enough for the largest trees to take root in it. For in this garden there was every thing that could either delight the eye or gratify the curiosity, beautiful and large trees, flowers, plants, and shrubs; and to keep every thing verdant and gay in the The Babylonians made great boasts of the antiquity of their knowledge in this kind of learning. They reckoned four hundred seventy three thousand years, from the observations of their first astrologers to the arrival of Alexander the Great; but Aristotle, who was curious in enquiring into the truth of what was related of these observations, desired of Calisthenes, his scholar, who accompanied Alexander to Babylon, to send him the most certain and exact account that he could gather of this matter; and accord. ingly he sent him astronomical observations that bad been made for one thousand nine hundred and three A. M. 3417, upper terrace, there was an aqueduct or engine which drew up water out of the river &c. or 4825. into a kind of a reservoir above, and from thence watered the whole garden. Ant. Chris. 587, &c. or 586. 4. The river indeed, at a certain season of the year, viz. in the months of June, July, and August, by the sun's melting the snow in the mountains of Armenia, used to overflow its banks (in the same manner as the Nile in Egypt does), to the great damage of the city and country of Babylon; and therefore, to prevent this inconvenience for the future, Nebuchadnezzar had two artificial canals cut on the east side of the Euphrates, in order to carry off the superfluous water into the Tigris. One of these canals discharged itself near Selucia, and the other over-against Apamia: and, for the farther security of the country, from the head of these canals down to the city, and some way lower, he made vast banks of brick and bitumen; but the most wonderful part of the work was within the city. There, on each side of the Euphrates, he built, from the very bottom of the channel, a great wall of the same thickness with the walls of the city, i. e. eighty-seven feet thick, and of an hundred and sixty furlongs (which are † twenty miles of our measure) in length; and over against every street that crossed the river, he made on each side a brazen gate in the wall, and stairs leading down to the river, from whence the inhabitants used to pass by boat from one part of the city to the other. 5. It was necessary, however, that while this work was carrying on the stream should be diverted some other way; and therefore, to this purpose, he had a vast artificial lake made to the west of Babylon, which, according to the lowest computation, was forty miles square, and an hundred and sixty in compass; and being of a proportionable depth, was able to contain all the water until the work was finished. When this was done, the river was returned to its former channel; but the lake, and the canal which led to it, was still preserved, because they were found of use, not only to prevent the danger of all overflowings of the river, but to keep water likewise all the year round, as in a common reservatory, which might be let out upon proper occasions by sluices, for the improvement and fertilizing of the ground. These are some of the vast works +2 which the generality of historians ascribe to Nebuchadnezzar, and, upon the view and contemplation of which, he grew so arrogant and elated, as to think himself equal, if not superior to God: For "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the honour of my majesty ?" says he of himself; («) and, who is God but Nebuchadnezzar ? says his sycophants concerning him. The truth is, if we will credit the account in the book of Judith relating to this prince, he was, in his temper, a professed atheist: The sense of his success in life, and of the wonderful works which he had achieved, both in a civil and military capacity, had so intoxicated his reason, as to make him become fool enough to say in his heart, there was no other God but himself; for this is the avowed purpose of his sending his armies under the general Holofernes, (b)" That all nations should worship him only, and that all tongues and tribes should call upon him as God *." And therefore this work must have begun two miles and an half above the city, and continued two miles and an half below it, because the city through out was no more than fifteen miles. Prideaux's Connection, Anno 570. + Berosus, Megasthenes, and Abydenus, attribute all these works to Nebuchadnezzar; but Herodotus tells us, that the bridge, the river banks, and the lake, were the work of Nitocris his daughter-in-law, who might possibly finish what he at his death left incom plete, and upon that account receive from this histo. rian the honour of the whole. * [There is nothing in the canonical books of the Old Testament, where Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned, from which it can reasonably be inferred that he was an atheist; and the Nabuchodonosor of the Apocryphal book of Judith appears to have been a very different man. In that book Nabuchodonosor is expressly said to have reigned in Nineveh, and to have been the king of the Assyrians; but it nowhere appears that Nebuchadnezzar ever held his court in Nineveh. By Dr Hales, Nabuchodonosor is supposed, on good ground, to have been the immediate successor of Ninus III. the immediate predecessor of Sarea, or Sardanapolus II. and therefore the last king of Nineveh |