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should have been afflicted an hundred and fifty years, which thy predecessors knew, and performed for their parts; but thou hast released it, there⚫fore shalt thou live but six years.' It is very strange that the gods should be offended with a king for his piety; or that they should decree to make a country impious when the people were desirous to serve them; or, that they having so decreed, it should lie in the power of a king to alter destiny, and make the ordinance of the gods to fail in taking full effect. But these were Egyptian gods. The true God was doubtless more offended with the restitution of such idolatry than with the interruption; and who knows whether Chemmis did not learn somewhat at Jerusalem in the last years of his father Sesac, that made him perceive, and deliver to those that followed him, the vanity of his Egyptian superstition? Most sure it is, that his reign, and the reigns of Cheops and Cephrenes, were more long and more happy than that of Mycerinus, who, to delude the oracle, revelled away both days and nights, as if, by keeping candles lighted, he had changed his nights into days, and so doubled the time appointed :-a service more pleasing to the devil than the restitution of idolatry durst then seem, when it could speed no better. I find in Reineccius fifty years assigned to this king; which I verily believe to have been some error of the print, though I find it not corrected among other such oversights; for I know no author that gives him so many years; and Reineccius himself takes notice of the oracle that threatened Mycerinus with a short life, as is before shewed.

Bocchorus is placed next unto Mycerinus, by Diodorus, who speaks no more of him than this, that he was a strong man of body, and excelling his predecessors in wit. He is spoken of by divers authors, as one that loved justice, and may be taken for that Banchyris, whom Suidas commends in that kind: Eusebius reckons four and forty years of his reign,

After Bocchorus, one Sabacus, an Ethiopian, follows in the catalogue of Diodorus, but certain ages after him. Herodotus, quite omitting Bocchorus, hath Asychis, who made a sharp law, (as it was then held,) against bad debtors, that their dead bodies should be in the creditors disposition till the debt was paid. This Asychis made a pyramid of bricks, more costly and fair, in his own judgment, than any of those that the former kings had raised. Besides this Asychis, Herodotus placeth one Anycis, a blind man, before the Ethiopian: the reigns of these two are perhaps those many ages, which the Egyptians, to magnify their antiquities, accounted between Bocchorus and him that followed them. But all this could make but six years; and so long doth Functius, so long doth Reineccius hold, that these two kings, between them both, did govern. If any man would lengthen this time, holding it improbable that the reigns of two kings should have been so soon spent, he may do it by taking some years from Sethon or Psammeticus, and adding them to either of these; to add unto these, without substracting from some other, would breed a manifest inconvenience; forasmuch as part of Sesac's reign must have been in the fifth of Rehoboam *; as also the last of Pharaoch Necho was the fourth of Jehoiakim, and the first of Nebuchadnezzar. For mine own part, I like it better to allow six years only to these two kings, than to lose the witness of Herodotus, who, concurring herein with the scriptures, doth speak of Sennacherib's war, at which time Sethon was king of Egypt. I will not, therefore, add years unto these obscure names; for by adding unto these men three years, we shall thrust the beginning of Sethon out of place, and make it later than the death of Sennacherib. In regard of this agreement of Herodotus with the scriptures, I am the more willing to hold with

22 Kings xiv 25. 2 Chron. xii. 2,

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him, in his Egyptian kings; otherwise it were a matter of no great envy, to leave both Asychis and Amysis out of the roll, which were easily done by placing Sesac lower, and extending his life yet six years further, or more, (if the like abridgement shall be required of Psammeticus's reign,) into the years of Rehoboam.

Of Sabacus, the Ethiopian, who took the kingdom from Amysis, it is agreed by the most that he reigned fifty years. He was a merciful prince, not punishing all capital offences with death, but imposing bondage and bodily labour upon malefactors, by whose toil he both got much wealth into his own hands, letting out their service to hire, and performed many works of more use than pomp, to the singular benefit of the country. Zonaras calls this king Sua, the scriptures call him So. Hosea, the last king of Israel, made a league with him against Salmanassar, little to his good; for the Egyptian was more rich than warlike, and therefore his friendship could not preserve the Israelite from destruction.

It seems that the encroaching power of the Assyrian grew terrible to Egypt about these times, the victories of Tiglath Pileser and Salmanassar having eaten so far into Syria, in the reign of this one king So or Sabacus. Yea, perhaps, it was in his days, (for his reign began in the fourth of Menahem,) that Pul himself did make the first entrance into Palæstina. This caused So to animate the halfsubdued people against their conquerors; but the help which he and his successor gave them was so faint, that Sennacherib's embassador compared the Egyptian succour to a broken staff of reed. Such indeed had Hosea found it, and such Hezekiah might have found it, had he not been supported by the strong staff of him that rules all nations with a rod of iron. It appears by the words of Rabshakeh, that the opinion was great in Judah of the Egyptian forces, for cha

riots and horsemen 3; but this power, whatsoever it was, grew needful within a little while, for the defence of Egypt itself, which So left unto Sethon his successor, having now fulfilled the fifty years of his reign.

Herodotus and Diodorus have both one tale, from the relation of Egyptian priests, concerning the departure of this king, saying, that he left the country, and willingly retired into Ethiopia, because it was often signified unto him in his dreams, by the god which was worshipped at Thebes, that his reign should be neither long nor prosperous, unless he slew all the priests in Egypt; which rather than to do, he resigned his kingdom. Surely these Egyptian gods were of a strange quality, that so ill rewarded their servants, and invited kings to do them wrong. Well might the Egyptians, (as they likewise did,) worship dogs as gods, when their chief gods had the property of dogs, which love their masters the better for beating them. Yet to what end the priests should have feigned this tale I cannot tell; and therefore I think that it might be some device of the fearful old man, who, seeing his realm in danger of an invasion, sought an honest excuse for his departure out of it, and withdrawing himself into Ethiopia, where he had been bred in his youth. What if any one should say, that the Ethiopia into which he went was none other than Arabia, whereof Tirhakah the king, (perhaps at the instigation of this man,) raised an army against Sennacherib, when he meant to invade Egypt, within two or three years after? But I will not trouble myself with such inquiry. This I hold, that So, or Sabacus, was not indeed an Ethiopian, (for in his time lived the prophet Isaiah, who mentioneth the antiquity of Pharaoh's house,) but only so surnamed for his education, and because issuing from thence he got the kingdom from Amysis, who was his opposite. The quiet and mild form of his government, his holding the kingdom so long without an army, 82 Kings xviii, 24

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and many other circumstances, argue no less. But whether finally he betook to a private life, or whether he forewent his life and kingdom at once, being now very old, it is time that we leave him, and speak of Sethon, his next successor, who is omitted by Diodorus, but remembered by Herodotus, by a sure token of his having been king.

SECT. VII.

Of Sethon, who reigned with Hezekiah, and sided with him against Sennacherib.

THE first year of Sethon's reign falls into the twelfth of Hezekiah, which was the fifth of Sennacherib. It was a troublesome age, and full of danger; the two great kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt being then engaged in a war, the issue whereof was to determine whether of them should rule or serve. The Assyrian had the better men of war, the Egyptian better provision of necessaries; the Assyrian more subjects, the Egyptian more friends; and among the new conquered half subjects of Ashur, many that were Egyptian in heart, though Assyrian in outward shew.

Of this last sort were Hezekiah and his people; who, knowing how much it concerned Pharaoh to protect them against his own great enemy, preferred the friendship of so near and mighty a neighbour, before the service of a terrible, yet far removed king. But herein was great difference, between Hezekiah and his subjects; for the good king, fixing his especial confidence in God, held that course of policy which he thought most likely to turn to the benefit of his country; the multitude of Judæa, looking into the fair hopes which this Egyptian league promised, were puffed up with vain conceits, think-ing that all was safe, and that now they should not need to fear any more of those injuries, which they had suffered by the Assyrians, and so became for

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