II Kings - Ferrar Fenton Bible Translation page 403

21~—7 THE MONARCHICAL PERIOD.——I1. KINGS. 21-26 thc fire, to the clouds, and to the serpent, and practised rnecromnncy, and used soothsayers, continually in- creasing to do evil in the sight ofthe EvBR—L1v1N0 to insult Him. He even fixed the Image of Fortune that he had made in the House, which the EVER-L.1v1NG snid to David and In this House, andin]erusa1em,which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel, I will fix My Name for ever! And I will not again cause the feet of Israel to wander from the land that I gave to their forefathers,~——i£ only they con~ tinue to practise all that I commanded them, and all the laws that Moses, My Servant, ordered for them} But they would not listen. Manasheh thus apostatized to practise sin with the heathen whom the EVER-LIVING swept from before the children of Israel. (ac. 690.) (Ely: $rszni:I;zrs sent tc ro rr iizpruim Zéim. the Preachers, to say: The EvER—LIv1NG consequently sent a message bythe hands of His servants ‘ Since Manasheh, king of Judah, has practised these hideous sins, worse than all that the Amorites who preceded him, and judah has also sinned with his id0ls,-therefore thus says the Even-1.1v1Ne Gon of Israel, ’ I will bring such evil upon jerusalem and judah that both the ears of all who hear it shall tingle. And I will extend over jerusalem the rule of Shomeron, and the plummet of the House of Ahab, and overturn jerusa- lem as a bowl is overturned and flung on its face! I will also abandon the remnant of My Inheritance, and give them to the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a contempt and scorn to all their enemies, because they have done wrong in My sight, and have been an irritation to Me, from the clay I brought their fathers from among the Mitzeraim to this day. And Manasheh has also shed very much innocent blood, until he has filled jerusalem from face to face, to destroy it with the sins he has caused judah to sin by doing evil in the sight of the Evan-uvmG.’ As to the other affairs of Manasheh,

and all that he did and the sins that he sinned, they are related in the history of events during the period of the kings of judah. At last Manasheh slept with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his palace, in the Park of Aza, and Amon, his son, suc- ceeded him. 16 18 (ac. 643.) ilizigxz ¤f 3iu¤u·ln:xr· £la¤asb2I;———@is Sins. Amon was twenty—two years of age

at his coronation, and he reigned two years in jerusalem, and his mother’s name was Meshulamath, daughter of Kharotz of jatbah. He, however, did wrongin the sightof the l3v1:1z-Livme, as Manasheh his father had done, and followed all the ways his father went, and served the idols that his father served, and bowed to them. He also forsook the EVER-L1vING GOD of his ancestors, and did not walkin the paths of the livna-Lrvmo. So the Officers of Amon conspired against him and killed the king in his palace. The country people, however, assailed all the conspirators, against king Amon, and elected his son joshiah king in his place. The rest of the things that Amon did are recorded in the history of events in thetimes of the kings of jutlah. And they buried him in his own tomb in the Park of Aza, and his son joshiah reigned after him. 20 21 22 26

would have been incomprehensible to the mass of his readers in his own day, and far more so to us. Consequently it is a mistake to read the books from joshua to the end of the 20th Chapter of the and Kings, as merely a political History of Israel and judah, by several different writers, as all former students have done, for they are clearly composed for a single purpose, and meant to be the Philosophy of the History of the Hebrew Race, and to point out the sources of their national prosperity, and the causes of their decay, paralysis, and ruin at the time of the Teacher and Prophet·-for he was both--and not only to them, but to the whole human race, by a special Divine inspiration. In his history he tries to make this object clear, by constantly referring his readers to

the National Records or former historians he cites, for any information they might desire about merely political events. This point of view, I think, is well worth the attention of students and critics, as well as heoloians. In the old Heb f the Books of the Bible the Boo tgrew arrangement oks containing the sections dealing with the different periods of the national evolution, decline, and fal of the Hebrew people, from the death of Moses-—that is, the Books from joshua to 2nd Kings stand immediately before Isaiah, which seems to support my view, and the statement of Chron., Ch. 32, v. 32, already cited, confirms it.··—F. F. 402