can build nothing certain upon: and to alter old authors upon conjecture only is never to be allowed, especially where the context will bear the one reading as well as the other; for, since the various fancies of men may lead to various conjectures, if there should be such a liberty allowed, whole books may be thus altered away, and utterly defaced, by such conjectural emendations; and many good authors have already too much suffered by it.

And thus far I have explained this important prophecy in all its parts and branches, and fully shewn all those events in which every particular of it had its completion. That there are several difficulties in it must be acknowledged. The perplexities which many learned men have been led into in their explications of it do sufficiently prove it; and the understanding in a literal sense what is there meant in a figurative hath not been the least cause hereof. Not to be delivered in plain terms is what is common to all prophecies, there being none of them without their difficulties and obscurities. There is too great an itch in mankind to look into futurities, which belong to God only to know. And, although God hath been pleased so far to gratify our curiosity herein, as to give us prophecies for the magnifying of his omniscience among us; yet they are most of them delivered in such dark and obscure terms, as not to be thoroughly understood till after they are fulfilled. Then the events become sure comments upon the text. And I hope, when the reader hath fully considered all that is above proposed concerning this very important prophecy, he will be thoroughly satisfied how every particular of it hath had its completion.

having

An. 457.

Artax. 8.

But, to return again to our history, Ezra found, in the second year of his government, that many of the people had taken strange wives, contrary to the law, and that several of the priests and Levites, as well as other chief men of Judah and Benjamin, had transgressed herein, after he had, in fasting and prayer, deprecated God's wrath for

it, he caused proclamation to be made for all the people of Israel that had returned from the captivity, to gather themselves together at Jerusalem, under the penalty of excommunication and forfeiture of all their goods; and, when they were met, he made them sensible of their sin, and engaged them in a promise and covenant before God, to depart from it, by putting away their strange wives, and all such as were born of them, that the seed of Israel might not be polluted with such an undue commixture; and thereon commissioners were appointed to inquire into this matter, and cause every man to do according to the law herein. And they sat down the first day of the tenth month to examine hereinto, and made an end by the first day of the first month; so that, in three months time, that is, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months of the Jewish year, a thorough reformation was made of this transgression; which three months answer to January, February, and March, in our year.

About this time, Bigthan and Teresh, two eunuchs of the palace, entered into a conspiracy against the life of king Artaxerxes. Most likely they were of those who had attended queen Vashti; and, being now out of their offices by the degrading of their mistress, and the advancing of another into her place, took that disgust thereat, as to resolve to revenge themselves on the king for it; of which Mordecai having gotten the knowledge, he made discovery hereof to queen Esther, and she, in Mordecai's name to the king; whereon inquiry being made into the matter, and the whole treason laid open and discovered, the two traitors were both crucified for it, and the history of the whole matter was entered on the public registers and annals of the kingdom.

Megabyzus and Artabazus, who were appointed generals by Artaxerxes for the Egyptian war, had drawn together into Cilicia and Phoenicia an army of three hundred thousand men for that expedition; but wanting a fleet for the carrying of it on by sea, they were forced to tarry there all this year, while it was a pre

h Esther ii, 21.

i Ctesias. Diod. Sic. lib. 11.

paring for them in Cilicia, Cyprus, and Phoenicia, and other maritime parts of the Persian empire there adjoining; all which time they carefully employed in exercising their soldiers, and practising and instructing them in all military arts for the war; which conduced not a little to the victory which they afterwards obtained. In the interim, Inarus with his Egyptians and the Athenian auxiliaries, pressed hard their assaults upon the white wall at Memphis; but the Persians valiantly defending themselves, the siege continued all this year without any success.

An. 456.

Artax. 9.

But the next year after, the Persian fleet being ready, Artabazus took the command of it, and set sail for the Nile; and, at the same time, Megabyzus marched the army over land to Memphis; where, on his arrival, having raised the siege, and joined the besieged, he gave battle to Inarus and all his forces, and overthrew them with a great slaughter, which fell chiefly upon the Egyptian revolters. After this defeat, Inarus, though wounded in the fight by Megaby zus, made his retreat with the Athenian auxiliaries, and as many of the Egyptians as would follow him, to Biblus, a city standing in the island Prosopitis; which being surrounded by the Nile, and the branches of that river encompassing it being both navigable, the Athenians drew up their fleet into one of them, in a station where it was safe from the enemy, and endured a siege of a year and a half in that island. In the interim, the rest of the Egyptians, after that blow, all submitted to the conquerors, and returned again to their obedience to king Artaxerxes, excepting Amyrtæus, who still maintained a party against them in the fens, where he reigned many years; the Persians, by reason of the difficulty of access to those parts, having been never able to reduce him.

In the mean time, the Persian army at Prosopitis pressed on the siege; but finding that they could make no work of it by the usual and common ways of war, by reason of the valour and resolution of the defendants, at length had

Thucydides, lib. 1. Ctesias. Diodor. Sic. lib. 11, 1 Ibid.

An. 454. Artax. 11.

recourse to craft and stratagem, whereby they soon accomplished what by open force they could not effect; for having, by the making of many channels, drained that branch of the Nile in which the Athenian fleet had its station, they laid it on dry ground, and made a passage open for all their army to pass over into the island; whereon Inarus, seeing his case desperate, with all his Egyptians, and about fifty of the Athenian auxiliaries, came to composition with Megabyzus, and yielded to him on terms of safety for their lives. But the rest of the auxiliaries, being in number about six thousand, put themselves on their defence; and therefore, having set their fleet on fire, stood together in battle array, with resolution to die with their swords in their hands, and, in imitation of the Lacedæmonians that fell at Thermopyla, sell their lives as dear as they could; which the Persians perceiving, and not being willing to engage with men so desperately resolved, offered them peace on terms, that they should leave Egypt, and have a free passage home into their own country which way they should choose for their return thither; which being accepted of, they delivered the island, with the city of Biblus, to the conquerors, and marched to Cyrene, where they took shipping for Greece. But the major part of those that went on this expedition perished in it.

And this was not all the loss which the Athenians suffered in this war: m for another fleet of fifty sail being sent by them for the relief of those who were besieged in Prosopitis, they arrived at one of the mouths of the Nile, a little after the place was delivered, with inten tion to sail up the Nile, for the assistance of their countrymen, to the place where they were besieged, not knowing the misfortune that had happened to them. But they were no sooner entered the river, but they were set upon by the Persian fleet from the sea, and assaulted with darts by their land army from the shore; so that they all perished, excepting a very few of their ships, which broke through the enemy and escaped. And here ended this unfortunate war, which the Athe

m Thucydides, lib. 1.

nians made in Egypt, in the sixth year after it was begun. And, after this, Egypt was again reduced under the Persian yoke, and so continued all the remaining time of the reign of Artaxerxes.

Joachim, the high priest of the Jews, being dead, was" succeeded by Eliashib his son, who bore that office forty years.

An. 453.

Artax. 12.

Haman, an Amalekite of the posterity of Agag, who was king of Amalek in the time of Saul, growing to be the chief favourite of king Artaxerxes, all the king's servants were commanded to pay reverence unto him, and bow before him; and all of them obeyed the royal order herein, excepting Mordecai the Jew, who, sitting in the king's gate according to his office, paid not any reverence to Haman at such times as he passed by into the palace, neither bowed he at all to him: of which, being told, he was exceeding wroth; but scorning to lay hands on one man only, and being informed that he was a Jew, he resolved, in revenge of this affront, to destroy not only him, but also his whole nation with him; and to this perchance he was not a little excited by the ancient enmity which was between them and the people of whom he was descended. And, therefore, for the accomplishing of this design, on the first day of the first month, that is, the month Nisan, he called together his diviners, to find out what day would be the most lucky for the putting of it in execution; whereon they having, according to the way of divination then in use among those eastern people, cast lots, first upon each month, and after upon each day of the month, did thereby determine for the thirteenth day of the twelfth month following, called Adar, as the day which they judged would be the most lucky for the accomplishing of what he purposed; whereon he forthwith went in unto the king, and having insinuated to him that there was a certain people, dispersed all over his empire, who did not keep the king's laws, but followed laws of their own, diverse from the laws of all other people, to the disturbance of the good order of his kingdom, and the breach of that uniformity whereby

n Chronicon Alexandrin. Neh. xii, 10. Joseph. Antiq. lib. 11, c. 5. • Esther iii.