Judah. Even if you give them horses, they have not soldiers to put upon them. II. The Syrian language.-Hezekiah's ministers beg Rabshakeh to speak Aramaic, not Hebrew, that the common people may not understand them. ib. That they may eat, etc.—Who have to undergo siege and its extremities of famine for your pleasure. 17. Until I come, etc.-According to the Assyrian system, the inhabitants of Judah were to be finally deported as those of Israel had been. 19. Hamath and Arphad.-See note on x, 9. ib. Sepharvaim.—Sippara, or the sun-city, in Mesopotamia, on the Euphrates. 37. 8. Libnah.-Like Lachish, one of the cities of Judah. Sennacherib probably moved from Lachish hither in order to meet the army of Tirhakah. 9. Tirhakah. -Sennacherib defeated the army of Egypt and Ethiopia at Altaku, in the south of Palestine. But it is doubtful how far his victory was complete; at all events it did not enable him to effect the conquest of Egypt. Tirhakah, or Taharka, did not come to the throne until 692 B.C., so that he is probably here called "king of Ethiopia,” as commanding for Shabatok, his predecessor, the son of Shabak. 12. Gozan and Haran, etc.—Territories and places of Mesopotamia conquered by Shalmaneser. The "children of Eden" are the Bit-Adini, or tribe of Adini; Telassar, or Asshur's Hill, is probably a new name given to their place of dwelling by the conqueror. 13. Hena and Ivah.-These places cannot be identified, but were probably in Mesopotamia. 24. To the sides of Lebanon.-Lebanon stands for Israel, the northern kingdom. After felling and destroying there, the Assyrian invader will now pass on to the hill of Zion at the farther end of Palestine, and to the royal palace of the kings of Judah. 25. I have digged, etc.-The Assyrian king's march against Egypt is in the prophet's mind. He makes the king boast of providing water for his army in crossing the desert, and of turning the streams which defended the Egyptian towns. 30. A sign unto thee.-Judah and its king are addressed. For two years the invader's presence in the country shall prevent regular cultivation; then the land. shall be rid of him, and the tiller of the ground shall resume his occupation. 36. Then the angel, etc.—See Introduction, p. 20. See also Herodotus, ii, 141, for a different account of this disaster to Sennacherib's army. According to Herodotus, the disaster took place at Pelusium, on the border of Egypt, and was due to a plague of field mice devouring the bow-strings, leathern shield-straps, etc., of the Assyrians. 38. His sons smote him. -As Sennacherib's death and Esar-haddon's accession did not occur till 680 B.C. this verse is probably a later addition. But see Introduction, p. 41. 38. This chapter relates events which happened in 7II B.C., and should probably, as has been already said, commence thus: "Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that in those days was Hezekiah sick unto death." 10. In the smoothness. In the midst of the evenflowing, natural course of my days. 16. By these things men live.-By these divine promises and their fulfilment. 22. What is the sign.-See verse 7. 39. 1. Merodach-baladan.—In 711 B.C. this vassal king was preparing to revolt against Sargon, and would therefore gladly seize the opportunity of communicating with Hezekiah in view of his alliance. In 709 the revolt was crushed, and the stronghold of the Bit-Yakin, the children or tribe of Yakin, in Southern Babylonia, into which Merodach-baladan had thrown himself, was taken and destroyed. But Merodach-baladan escaped, and in 704 we find him in revolt against Sennacherib, and again defeated. "I victoriously entered his palace at Babylon," says Sennacherib in an inscription, “and opened his treasures." Merodach-baladan survived, however, to revolt yet once more against Sennacherib on the Assyrian king's return from Palestine, and to be once more defeated. 6. Shall be carried to Babylon.—Nebuchadnezzar's conquest and Judah's captivity did not come until 588 B.C., one hundred and twenty years later. The capital of the great king in 711 was Nineveh. But Babylon was in Sargon's time a royal residence of the king of Assyria, and the most famous city in his dominions; when therefore the vassal king of Babylon visited Hezekiah, Isaiah might naturally use Babylon, Merodach-baladan's capital, for the representative city of the great power threatening Judah's existence. THE END. Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh. A CATALOGUE of THEOLOGICAL Books, Published by MACMILLAN AND CO. Bedford Street, Strand, London, W.C. Abbott (Rev. E. A.)-Works by the Rev. E. A. 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