PREFACE.

Few words of introduction are needed to the following attempt to depict more vividly the real state and fortunes of the Hebrew people under their native kings. The documents are in the hands of us all; but, owing to their scattered nature, it is a very laborious task to combine them into a single point of view, and deduce from meagre notices anything like an historical representation.

A political history of the Hebrews is no doubt primarily to be here expected; but to omit on that account the narrative of their religious concerns, would be as absurd as to take no notice of Poetry, Art, and Philosophy in a history of Greece. The whole value of Hebrew history to us turns upon the Hebrew religion. No reader must therefore be surprised to find the writer dilate on solemn and profound topics, which would generally be out of place in ordinary history. On the other hand, as we have to deal with human fortunes, guaranteed to us by the evidence of documents which bear plentiful marks of the human mind and hand, we cannot dispense with a free and full criticism of these. And in criticizing, we

have no choice but to proceed by those laws of thought and of reasoning, which in all the sciences have now received currency. We advance from the known towards the unknown. We assume that human nature is like itself; and interpret the men of early ages by our more intimate knowledge of contemporary and recent times, yet making allowance for the difference of circumstances. Much more do we believe that GOD is always like himself, and that whatever are his moral attributes now and his consequent judgment of human conduct, such were they then and at all times. Nor ought we to question that the relations between the divine and the human mind are still substantially the same as ever, until we find this obvious presumption utterly to fail in accounting for the facts presented to our examination. We explain all the phænomena by known causes, in preference to inventing unknown ones; and when one anomaly after another is found gradually to be cleared up by patient research and a world of reality to evolve itself before the mind, fresh confirmation is added to the grand principles of modern philosophy, which experience proves alone to lead to self-consistent, harmonious results.

Cautious reasoners may need to be reminded, that although the mind of the Jews, as that of all nations, was liable to produce legends and mythi, under circumstances conducive to these, yet the portion of history with which we are here concerned has little properly mythical in it. We are engaged with an

PREFACE.

epoch, all the great outlines of which were preserved by the prose chronicling of contemporaries. From king David downwards, court-annals were kept, sometimes perhaps very dry and scanty, yet not the less authentic. With these were combined occasionally the writings of prophets, or the traditions of prophetical schools. Where the originals have perished, we have nevertheless relics of them in the books which are now called Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. The actual compilation of the books of Samuel was probably earlier than that of " Kings," but we do not know the exact date. The "Kings," to judge by their closing words, were compiled in the Babylonian exile. The Chronicles are much later, and in an imperfect genealogy bring down the line of Jeconiah (who was carried captive by Nebuchadnezzar) to a very low period of time'. Account must be taken of all such facts in balancing authorities; and when we find a wide difference of spirit between the two historians in treating the same subject,—a difference conformable to the different æras in which they write,—the great caution with which the later authority must be used will become evident. But on all such matters, the following pages will speak best for themselves in detail.

A thoughtful and conscientious reader will proba

1 1 Chron. iii. 17-24; Jeconiah, father of Pedaiah, father of Zerubbabel, father of Hananiah, father of Pelatiah [a chasm], father of Shechaniah, father of Shemaiah, father of Neariah, father of Elioenai, father of Hodaiah.