LECTURE VI.

THE DOOM OF NINEVEH, AS PREDICTED BY THE JEWISH PROPHETS, AND ITS TERRIBLE ACCOMPLISHMENT.

"And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the threshholds for he shall uncover the cedar work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand."-Zephaniah ii. 13-15.

BOLD and beautiful as all the poetical conceptions of the prophet Ezekiel confessedly are, none is more striking and appropriate than his parable of the Assyrian monarchy. This he described as a cedar of Lebanon, the head of which towered towards heaven, and the branches stretched over the earth: so that "all the fowls of heaven

made their nests in his boughs," and "all great nations" rested beneath its shadow, Ezek. xxxi. 6. This noble image can scarcely be regarded as a poetical exaggeration, for during the later periods of the empire its borders were so enlarged, as in fact to reach from the shores of the Hellespont to the banks of the Indus, and from the confines of Pontus to the very borders of Egypt. The Assyrian cedar, then, was an object of surpassing grandeur and beauty. With knarled roots, firmly holding to the soil, the thick-set and massive stem lifted up on high many pondrous arms, strong as the trunks of other trees, whilst the lower branches bent towards the ground with graceful symmetry. It was clothed, too, with a robe of perpetual verdure, and thickly hung with cones, that, like silver censers, glittered in the sun, and breathed forth the fragrance of the choicest balm.

"Thus was he beautiful in his greatness, in the length of his branches:

For his root was by many waters.

The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him ;

The fir trees were not like his boughs,

And the plane trees were not as his branches:

Not any tree in the garden of God

Was like unto him in his beauty.

So that all the trees of Eden,

Which were in the garden of God, envied him." a

"Ezek. xxxi. 7-9. Newcome's Translation.

but

And so his heart was lifted up with pride; the hand of God brought him to the dust. "For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,” Isa. ii. 12, 13. The prophet Ezekiel, pursuing his affecting allegory, further describes how "the terrible of the nations cut him down," so that his broken trunk and sapless branches lay stretched across the plain in ruin and desolation:

:

"Upon the mountains, and in all the valleys, his branches

fell;

And his boughs were broken by all the streams of the land; And all the people of the earth went down from his shadow and left him.

Upon his ruin dwelt all the fowls of the heavens ;

And upon his branches were all the beasts of the field:
To the end that none of all the trees by the waters
Exalt themselves for their stature,

Neither set their top

Among the thick boughs."a

This was no poetical dream, nor was it a prophetical announcement of calamities yet to come; but it was a record of what had already happened. The captive prophet had seen the feller wield the axe that shook the cedar to its roots, and made

a Ezek. xxxi. 12-14. Newcome's Translation.

the topmost boughs to tremble at every stroke; and had heard the fatal crash which brought it to the ground, and the screams of the affrighted birds as they fled from their nests in its falling branches. This sad tale of Assyria's overthrow and desolation he was commanded to recite, that Pharaoh, king of Egypt, might learn to abase himself before the Most High. "Howl, fir tree, for the cedar is fallen."

Now this terrible destruction, which had been predicted by the Jewish prophets, may be justified by the matured wickedness of the Assyrian people. I therefore proceed to show

First: How THE WICKEDNESS OF ASSYRIA WAS CONSUMMATED.

The Jewish prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Zephaniah and Nahum, brought the gravest accusations against the people of Nineveh, which some might regard as only the revilings of bitter enemies, did not fragments of ancient history, and the Assyrian antiquities that have been brought to light, abundantly sustain the solemn allegations. These I will now proceed to consider.

1. Their impious pride. Nineveh, the rejoicing city, as our text declares, dwelt carelessly and securely, saying in her heart, "I am, and there is none besides me." The exaggerated estimate they

formed of themselves, and the contempt they felt for other nations, was shown by the Assyrians on their sculptured walls, where, after the manner of the Egyptians, they portrayed their heroes as of gigantic strength and stature, whilst their enemies were made like dwarfs and pigmies. The language of Sennacherib, you will remember, breathed this imperious and disdainful spirit, and Nabuchodonosor, the penultimate sovereign of Assyria, displayed a temper equally haughty, scornful, and impious.

In the Book of Judith, "which is perfectly consonant with the whole range of sacred and profane history, and supplies some important links in both, not found elsewhere," we learn that he called into his presence Holofernes, the chief captain of his army, and as "the great king, the lord of the whole earth," commanded him, at the price of his life, to take a hundred and twenty thousand footmen, and twelve thousand horse, all men "that trust in their own strength,” and go to avenge him upon the western countries, from the Euphrates to the Jordan and the Nile, because they had made light of his commands, and had refused to send him aid in his expedition against Ecbatana, the capital of the Medes. This whole address breathed out threatenings and slaughter; he delighted to anticipate that " Hales's Sacred Chronology, vol. ii. p. 432.