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SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

()"HIGH PLACES," p. 586.-The few remarks we have to offer on this subject may be regarded as supplementary to the statements given in previous pages respecting what are called Druidical monuments. Indeed our previous inquiries greatly simplify the present question. The interpretation of the "high places" which our previous conclusions suggest, is precisely that which the frequent mention of these "high-places" in the Scriptures would spontaneously suggest to any reader. And this is that they were such rude altars as have already been described erected on conspicuous spots, often on the tops of natural hills or artificial mounds. That altars or other sacred stones marked these high places, is obvious from the phrases expressing erection or setting up. Taken in this more limited signification, there are existing remains of such erections in different quarters. In the Monumentarum Danicorum' of Olaus Wormius, we see, at p. 8, a sacred hill crowned by a cromlech, below which a circle of stones runs round the hill, which itself stands within a square of Druidical stones. In another place (p. 35) a similar hill, similarly enclosed, has two circles of stones, one around the base, and the other about one-third below the summit. Our Aggle-Stone (of which a figure is given below), in the isle of Purbeck, may be regarded as a remarkable monument of this class.

We incline to think, however, that the term, as applied in Scripture, might denote any place of a sacred stone or stones to which people congregated for worship, whether containing an altar for sacrifice or not, and whether upon a hill or not; and they may have taken the name of "high places," from their having been, originally, most commonly upon hills or it is not unlikely that they may have been so called from their own height of structure, independently of situation; and even their being places of worship and sacrifice, might entitle them to the denomination of high or eminent places, without reference to either of these circumstances.

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It is clear that " high places" were not always, nor in later times generally, in elevated spots. When men ranged the world and had no certain dwelling place, the preference of an elevation for their altars was easier than when settled habitations were established in plains,

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and with reference to other contingencies, than the presence of a mountain or a hill. This may be proved from Scripture. In some passages the "high places" are distinguished from hills. Sometimes high places were made in every city," many of which had no eminence in or near them. Accordingly they are described as being in streets. This last text, with various others, also shows that the high places were of rude stone or artificial materials, capable of being destroyed by violence, for it is threatened to break them down. This also appears with reference to those that were really on eminences.||

In the same passage high places are described in valleys and by the side of rivers. Of Jeroboam, it is even said that "he made a house of high places." We also read of high places that were not removed or taken away by Asa,** by Jehoshaphat, or by Jehoash.‡‡ They were taken away by Hezekiah; but were built up again by Manasseh.§§ Josiah “brake down the high places of the gate,"|||| as well as those that were in the cities of Samaria,¶¶"the name of which we had been previously told that the children of Israel "built them high places in all their cities.”***

From these and other instances, we conclude that there were places in various situations, consecrated to religious worship and generally to altar-service; and that this appropriation was marked by such altars and monuments of stone as still remain in various quarters.

The Israelites were commanded to destroy the high places which had been consecrated to idols, as abominable things; while the principle of but one place of altar-service, precluded the use of high places in the service of Jehovah. It appears, however, that this preclusion of high places in the service of God was not rigidly enforced until after the building of the temple: and although, after that, the offering of sacrifices and oblations at high places is noticed with reprehension, it is not clear that they were not even then allowed as places of

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resort for public worship and instructionbearing the same relation to the Temple as did the synagogues of after times, in which there were no offerings or sacrifices, nor any ritual service. The sentiment of the Jews in this matter is, that even sacrifice at the high places, when the intention was above suspicion, was lawful prior to the Temple: and, certainly, before then such acts were performed by men whose intentions were unquestionably right, and the high places themselves are described rather with approbation than reproach. The habit of this was so rooted that even the best kings found it difficult to interfere with it, after a stricter rule had been established on the erection of the temple. It is often mentioned with blame that the people, in the best times, continued to offer sacrifice

1 Sam. ix. 12, 19, 25; x. 5; 1 Kings iii. 4. &c.

and burn incense at the high places, to which (as we understand) they lawfully resorted, in their several districts, on the Sabbaths and other occasions for worship. That there should be such places of resort, at which services might be rendered similar to those which afterwards distinguished the synagogues, is not only probable, and almost necessary in itself, but appears to be indicated in some passages:* and it would be difficult to show what these were but the high places, at which it was so difficult to wean the people from rendering those further and higher services of sacrifice and oblation, which should have been peculiar to the Temple and the altar there. It is quite unlikely that they had other places of religious resort than those at which they were so much disposed to render higher services than the law allowed.

Psalm xxvii. 12; lxviii. 26; Isa. vii. 19.

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JEHU, having executed his avenging mission upon the house of Ahab, and overthrown the idolatries of Baal, ascended the throne of Israel in the year 895 B.C.

There was a point beyond which Jehu was not prepared to go in his boasted zeal for Jehovah. He was ready to punish and discountenance all foreign worship; but it was no part of his policy to heal the schism between Judah and Israel, by abolishing the separate and highly irregular establishment, for the worship of Jehovah, before the symbolic golden calves, which Jeroboam had established, and which all his successors had maintained. The vital root therefore remained in the ground, although the branches had been lopped off. It also appeared, ere long, that the foreign idolatries of Ahab and Jezebel had acquired too much prevalence to be entirely extirpated by any coercive reformation. As soon as the heat of that reformation had cooled, such idolatries again gradually stole into use, although no longer with the sanction or favour of the government.

For these things the kingdom of Israel was in the latter days of Jehu allowed to be shorn of the provinces beyond Jordan. That fair country was ravaged, and its fortresses seized by Hazael, king of Syria, who, without any recorded opposition from the king of Israel, appears to have annexed it to his own dominions.

Jehu died in 867 B.C., after a reign of twenty-eight years.

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He was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz, who reigned seventeen inglorious years. lowed the latter course of his father, and the people followed their own course. kind of punishment was therefore continued. The Syrians were still permitted to prevail over Israel, until, at length, Jehoahaz had only left, of all his forces, ten chariots, fifty horsemen, and ten thousand infantry; for "the king of Syria had destroyed the rest, and trampled on them like dust." By these calamities the king was at last awakened to a sense of his position and his danger: he made supplication to Jehovah with tears; and therefore his latter days were favoured with peace. He died in 850 B.C.

JOASH, his son, began to reign in the thirty-seventh year of his namesake, Joash king of Judah. Josephus gives this king a good character, which the sacred historian does not confirm. From looking at the few incidents of his life which it has been deemed worth while to preserve, we may reconcile these statements by discovering that he was in his private character a well-disposed, although weak, man; while as a king he made no efforts to discourage idolatry or heal the schism which the establishment of the golden calves had produced. In his days Elisha the prophet fell sick of that illness of which he died. When the king heard of his danger, he went to visit his dying bed, and wept over him, crying, "O my father! my father!-the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" As the idolatrous generation was now becoming extinct, and the good dispositions of Joash himself were recognised, the dying prophet was enabled to assure him, by a significant symbol, of three victories over the Syrians. Accordingly, Joash was enabled to keep them in check, and in the end to gain the ascendancy over them, so as to recover from Ben-hadad the possessions of which his own father had been deprived by the father of that Syrian king.

Joash reigned seventeen years.

In the year 834 B.C., JEROBOAM II. succeeded his father, whom he appears to have much resembled in character and proceedings. He began badly; and Josephus says that he engaged in various absurd foreign undertakings which proved very injurious to the nation. He was probably improved by ripening years; for the prophet Jonah was commissioned to promise him the complete recovery of the former dominions of the state. A great victory over the Syrians accordingly restored to him all the ancient divisions of Israel, from Hamath to the borders of the Dead Sea. His signal success over Amaziah the king of Judah has been recorded in the preceding chapter. Upon the whole, the reign of Jeroboam II. may be regarded as a brilliant one, considering the evil days on which the history has now fallen. In fact, it would not be easy to point to any king of the separate kingdom of Israel whose reign was more prosperous.

The prophet Jonah, named in the preceding paragraph, is the same whose reluctant mission to Nineveh,* the capital of the Assyrian empire, is related in the book which bears his name. "The king of Nineveh," whose humiliation with that of his people averted the doom impending over" that exceeding great city," is supposed to have been the predecessor of Pul, whom the history will speedily bring before us. Jonah's remarkable mission appears to have taken place about the year 800 B.C., at the latter end of the reign of Jeroboam, who died in 793 B.C., after a reign of forty-one years.

There was a delay in calling his son ZECHARIAH to the throne. Jeroboam II. began to reign in the fifteenth year of Amaziah king of Judah, and reigned forty-one years;† he died, therefore, in the sixteenth year of Uzziah king of Judah; but his son Zechariah did not succeed him until the thirty-eighth of Uzziah, which produces an interregnum of not less than twenty-two years. During this period great internal commotions prevailed, which more than compensated the absence of foreign war. Kings were suddenly raised to the throne, and as suddenly removed, agreeably to the representation which the prophet Hoshea gives of the state of the kingdom. The same representation also proves that at this period very gross corruptions of religion and of morals prevailed. Even the ultimate call of Zechariah to the throne

See the cut at the head of this chapter.

VOL. I.

+ 2 Kings xiv. 43.

2 Kings xv. 8. 4 H

had scarcely any effect in allaying these disburbances, and he was himself slain by Shallum in the sixth month of his reign. He was the last king of the house of Jehu: and thus was fulfilled the prediction that the family of Jehu should only retain the throne to the fourth generation.

SHALLUM, whose deed in slaying Zechariah was performed with the sanction and in the presence of the people, ascended the vacant throne in the year 771 B.C. But on receiving intelligence of this event, MENAHEM, the general of the army, marched against the new king, and having defeated and slain him in battle, after a reign of but thirty days, mounted the throne himself and through his influence with the army, he was enabled not only to retain his post, but to subdue the disturbances by which the country had of late years been distracted. In doing this he proceeded with a degree of barbarity which would have been scarcely excusable in even a foreign conqueror.*

It was in the time of Menahem that the Assyrians under Pul made their first appearance in Syria. Their formidable force precluded even the show of opposition from the king of Israel, who deemed it the wiser course to purchase peace from the Assyrian king at the price of a thousand talents of silver.† This sum he raised by the unpopular measure of a poll tax of fifty shekels each ‡ upon 60,000 of his wealthiest subjects. This is the first instance in either kingdom of money raised by taxation for a public object. In the kingdom of Judah such exigencies were met from the treasury of the temple, or of the crown; and probably there were, in ordinary times, analogous resources in Israel, but which we may readily conclude to have been exhausted in the recent troubles and confusions in that kingdom. Professor Jahn considers that the government of Israel had by this time become wholly military, in which conclusion we are disposed to acquiesce, although from other intimations than those to which he adverts.

After a reign of ten years Menahem died in 760 B.C., and was succeeded by his son PEKAHIAH, who after a short and undistinguished reign of two years, was slain by PEKAH, the commander of the forces, who placed himself on the throne.

The alliance of Pekah with Rezin the king of Syria, against the house of David, has been recorded in the preceding chapter, as well as the consequences which resulted from the resort of Ahaz king of Judah to the protection of Tiglath-pileser, the new king of Assyria, who overran Gilead and Galilee, and removed the inhabitants to Assyria and Media. After a reign of twenty years, Pekah received from Hoshea the same doom which he had himself inflicted upon his predecessor. This was in 738 B.C., being in the third year of the reign of Ahaz in Judah.

It appears that although Hoshea is counted as the next king, he was not immediately able to establish himself on the throne, but that an interregnum, or period of anarchy, of ten years' duration, followed the murder of Pekah.§ Thus, although the kingdom of Israel was now enclosed within very narrow boundaries, and surrounded on the north and east by the powerful Assyrians, it could not remain quiet, but was continually exhausting its strength in domestic conspiracies and broils.

From this struggle the regicide HOSHEA emerged as king. He proved a better ruler than most of his predecessors. He allowed the king of Judah (Hezekiah) to send messengers through the country inviting the people to a great passover which he intended to celebrate at Jerusalem, nor did he throw any obstacles in the way of the persons disposed to accept the invitation. He had a spirit which might have enabled him to advance the power and interests of the country under ordinary circumstances; but now, doomed of God, the kingdom was too much weakened to make the least effort against the Assyrian power. When therefore Shalmaneser, the new Assyrian king, invaded the country, he bowed his neck to receive the yoke

Joseph. Antiq. ix. 11, § 1.

Six pounds five shillings sterling.

+ Almost 375,000!. by the present value of this quantity of silver.

"Pekah king of Israel, began to reign in the fifty-second year of Uzziah (2 Kings xv. 27; 2 Chron. xxvi. 3); and in the twentieth year of his reign was slain by Hoshea (xv. 30) in the third year of the reign of Ahaz king of Judah (2 Kings xvi. 1); but Hoshea did not begin to reign until the twelfth year of Ahaz (xvii. 1), or the thirteenth current (2 Kings xvi. 10); conse quently the second interregnum in Israel lasted 13-3-10 years."-Hales.

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