3. Isaiah flourished from about the year 770 or 760, till the year 710 or 700, before Christ. Enter into the rock,' says he, in his prophecy 'concerning Judah and Jerusalem,' enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. 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 ;' &c.*

6

Though it is evident that this day of the Lord was to come on the kingdom of Judah, it would be impossible perhaps to determine with confidence the precise period spoken of. From the next chapter, however, it seems that it was to be when the whole stay of bread and water should be taken from Jerusalem and Judah; when the country should be ruined, and the great and mighty men should fall by the sword. For,' says the prophet, behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water, the mighty man, the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honorable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.....For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen.....Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon

the ground.' It is not improbable that this is a prediction of the Babylonish captivity, which began about 607 years before Christ: a century or more after the delivery of this prophecy.

Isaiah mentions also another day of the Lord; one that was to come upon another nation: Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt. And they shall be afraid; pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain, as a woman that travaileth; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.' 1

This, we learn from the context, was a propheey of the capture of Babylon by the Medes, and of the eventual desolation of that city; for it is introduced by the title, 'The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see ; '2 and it is succeeded by the following literal explanation; Behold I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver, and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces, and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to

5 iii. 1, 2, 3, 8, 25, 26. 1 Isa. xiii, 6-9.

2 xiii. 1,

generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there,' &c.3 Accordingly, Babylon was taken by Cyrus, after a very long war, and placed under the dominion of the Medes, in the year 539 before Christ: about two centuries after the date of this prophecy.

Such, then, was the burden of Babylon,' here foretold under the appellation of the day of the Lord. Now let the reader turn to the passage, and he will see that, notwithstanding no more is intended than the overthrow of a nation, it is des cribed in the most daring figures that heaven and earth could furnish: The stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine..... Therefore I will shake the heavens; and the earth shall remove out of her place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up. They shall every man turn to his own people, and every one flee into his own land. Every one that is found, shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.' &c.1

4. Not far, probably, from the year 607 before Christ, is the date of the following prophecy of Jeremiah This is the day of the Lord God of

3 xiii. 17-22.

1 Isa. xiii. 10, 13, 14, 15.

hosts; a day of vengeance that he may avenge him of his adversaries. And the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood; for the Lord God of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt; in vain shalt thou use many medicines, for thou shalt not be cured. '2

From the concluding words of the quotation, it seems that this day of the Lord was to exhaust ts vengeance on the Egyptians; and that such was the real meaning, may be seen at once by casting the eye on the title which the prophet gives to this prediction: The word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah the prophet against the Gentiles; against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of Judah."3 And it is a fact of historical record, that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the 607th before Christ, Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, advanced against Babylon, as far as the Euphrates; and was there defeated by Nebuchadrezzar or Nebuchadnezzar I.; who pursued his victory to the gates of Jerusalem, took the city, and thus established his sovereignty over Judea. This was the Beginning of the Babylonish captivity.

4

5. There is some difference of opinion among

2 Jer. xlvi. 10, 11.

3 xlvi. 1.

4 Josephus against Apion, i. 9. 2 Kings xxiv. 1–7. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5-8. Dan, 1. 3.

critics, as to the date of Obadiah's prophecy ; but Archbishop Newcomb has fixed it, with much probability, at about the 587th year before Christ. If his calculation is correct, we may determine with certainty the precise reference of the following passage in this prophecy concerning Edom,' 1 or Idumea: The day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen. As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head. For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.'

The guilt which the prophet alleged against the Edomites, as the occasion of the judgment threatened, was their hatred of the Israelites, and their connivance with the enemies who took Jerusalem: For thy violence against thy brother Jacob, shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off forever. In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them.'3 For this, the day of the Lord was near upon them. Accordingly we find, that about the year 586 before Christ, Nebuchadnezzar the Great, the second of that name, began the siege of Tyre; which continuing thirteen years, must have distressed Edom severely. At the end of this period, the Babylonian monarch marched his forces through that country, on his expedition against Egypt.

1 Obadiah 1,

2 15, 16,

3 10, 11.