H. S. Osborn

“ In this age we read that the seventh day was “a day of rest,” and the very ancient name for “rest” was very similar to the word Sabbath used in the Hebrew, and special observance of the day was ordered by the priests; thus “the shepherd of mighty nations (king) must not eat flesh cooked on the fire or in the smoke. He must not drive a chariot. He must not issue royal decrees; the lifting up of his hands finds favor with the god,” etc.45
5. It is plain therefore that the seventh day was a day of rest, a sacred day, in the time of ancient Babylonish kings. ”

“ Moses, at the age of forty, was driven into the desert of Sinai, on the east of Egypt, where he escaped from the wrath of the reigning Pharaoh, and where he remained 40 years, until the death of the king. The Pharaoh with whom Moses’ name is thus associated must have reigned a long time, and the reign of Rameses II. meets the conditions of the history, not only as to time, but also as to the name. It is for these reasons that the Egyptian Rameses II. is supposed to be the Pharaoh alluded to in the first chapter of the book of Exodus, as the Scripture Rameses. ”

“ As the history proceeds it becomes very plain that the descendants of Adam are selected with a purpose, which a general acquaintance with Scripture reveals. That purpose was to record the ancestry of Abraham and so of the children of Israel. Other descendants are occasionally mentioned when any interesting or important event suggests itself to the historian, but the main purpose is never lost sight of. ”

“ But as to all these opinions it must be remembered, First, that the era from the creation of Adam to the Flood, 1,656 years, is to be divided by the number ten, the number of the Patriarchs, which would require an individual length of life much longer than that enjoyed at the present day; and, Secondly, no scientific reasons can be offered why human life should be limited in duration to its present length. It varies now according to the contingencies of accident and disease, and old age itself may be only a modified form of disease and not essential to a human organism. ”

“ Gaza is well known, being 150 miles southwest of Sidon and about two miles from the shore of the Mediterranean, and is now a town of 15,000 inhabitants. Sodom and Gomorrah are not certainly located, being by some supposed to have been at the south end of the Dead Sea, but by others at the north end. Neither of the remaining names can be identified with any known sites. But it is plain that the Canaanites occupied the whole of Palestine west of the Jordan and as far north as the Lebanon Mountains, the Arvadites and Hamathites extending beyond them more than 130 miles north of Sidon. ”

“ During the life of Joshua and of the elders or officers who outlived their leader and were acquainted with the early history of the nation, the Israelites held to their obedience to and reverence for the Mosaic law in all its bearings upon them. But after this era of about thirty years a remarkable defection took place, and the generation which grew up was drawn into alliances and such social intercourse with the inhabitants that many were won over to the faith and rites of Canaanitish idolatry. ”

“ THE WISE MEN.
8. These men, usually known as “the Magi,” belonged to a class of astrologers whose office it was to study omens, or signs, as drawn from the planets. They were descendants of a class which was noted for learning and influence in the flourishing ages of Babylon and Nineveh, but neither of these cities was in existence at this time. As many of the Magi had retired eastward to Persia after the fall of Babylon, it is probable that these came from the Persian dominion to Jerusalem, expecting that there they should learn something of the new king. ”

“ A very large number of the wealthiest, and indeed of the most learned classes, remained behind. They did much for the support of the Temple and for other objects among those who had returned to Palestine, but they themselves continued the synagogue service in Babylonia and in Persia, as appears from various statements and allusions, not only in Jewish writings, but also in other history.
2. Among those Jews, however, who had returned to Palestine there arose very early a class of devout and earnest students of the Law and of the other books of Scripture. ”

“ With a fine army he attacked Nechoh, and defeated him with so dreadful a slaughter that the Egyptian king retreated rapidly to the Nile. Nebuchadnezzar followed him through Palestine to Pelusium, a city on the sea-coast frontiers of Egypt, about seventy miles east of the Nile. At this place he heard of the death of his father, at Babylon, and committing the army and his prisoners into the hands of his trusty generals, he left and, with a small escort, crossed the desert and arrived at Babylon, 700 miles distant to the east. ”

“ There are two places, each of which is pointed out as the Cana of the Gospel. One is eight miles due north of Nazareth and the other three and a half miles northeast of it. The one is on the north side of an extensive plain and is entirely in ruins, while the other is now an inhabited village. Early tradition seems to claim the former, but the latter is now, and appears always to have been, on the direct line to Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee from Nazareth, and it may be due to this fact that many have supposed it to be the Cana of the Gospel. ”

“ Sargon’s own account of the siege and of the captivity remarkably agrees with the statement in the book of Kings. These facts are derived from the Assyrian tablets.
4. In regard to this king of Assyria, Sargon by name, the verse in Isaiah 20:1 was for twenty-five centuries the only known evidence of his existence. It was not until recently, when the mound which covered his palace was excavated, that the name came to view. It was then discovered that he was one of the greatest kings of Assyria, and his history was recorded upon the large alabaster slabs which lined a part of his palace. ”

“ Due west from the city the Mediterranean is 36 miles distant and the Jordan is 18 miles due east. On the east side, in the time of David, a part of the city wall rose nearly 100 feet above the channel of the Kidron, and from the representations of fortified cities of these times, as they are met with upon the tablets both of Egypt and of Assyria, the stones of the walls were placed with great skill. Some of the ancient stones of the city are even now laid upon solid rock eighty feet below the soil at the base of the present wall on the east side and the southeast corner. ”

“ In its course at evening the advanced officers would soon lay out upon the area to be occupied the plan for encampment, and in a short time that space of land, which an hour before was the prowling-ground for a few wild beasts of the desert, would become the site of a city of 2,000,000 inhabitants, with long streets and squares lighted with the magnificent and mysterious flame which accompanied them during all their wanderings. ”

“ The king was spending his time at his splendid capital Susa, when he gave a feast of unexampled extravagance. It was at this feast that he became enraged at his queen because she refused to present herself, at the order of the king, before the half-drunken revellers of the occasion. The queen was deposed, and Esther was chosen in her place. The new queen was an orphan maiden of the tribe of Benjamin, and, about B. C. 478, she appeared before the king and the royal crown was placed upon her head. ”

“ The monotheistic nature of the religion of the Persians, and the fact that it allowed no idolatry nor any representation of the Supreme Being under any material form,115 rendered the Jewish settlement far less objectionable in Persia than in any other land, and it is, therefore, not improbable that the Jewish population was greater in the Persian Empire alone than it was at the same period in Palestine after the return from Babylon. ”

“ Jerusalem was in ruins. Its walls were broken down, and its palaces and Temple and all the chief houses and monuments of every description were levelled and burned so far as was possible. Judging from the allusions to the destroyed city which are occasionally found in Jewish writers, and from the accounts of similar destructions by Assyrian and Babylonish kings, it is probable that the city was more utterly ruined and made more uninhabitable than ever before or since. ”

“ Daniel went into captivity six or seven years before the captivity of Ezekiel, when Nebuchadnezzar first laid siege to Jerusalem, B. C. 606. At this time the king of Babylon took captive Daniel and his companions, who were young and of noble families, and had them sent to his palace to be educated for the king’s service. The Assyrian records show that it was a custom among the kings to select young men of talent and educate them at royal expense, that they might be special officers at court. ”

“ During the many years of captivity, Israel, that is the ten tribes, probably mingled with other nations in their midst and became very largely estranged from the father-land. There were fewer of the ties of religious faith with them than with Judah. Even the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, when they returned from the captivity and entered into their city Jerusalem and into the cities and lands surrounding, brought wives from the heathen about them,104 the very priests and Levites being also guilty, Ezra 9:1, although the Mosaic law prohibited such marriages. ”

“ The costly adornment and preservation of the sacred living bull, or Apis, and the magnificent funeral ceremonies and entombment of the dead Apis are frequently alluded to on the monuments of Egypt. Long before the departure of the Israelites from Egypt the veneration of the sacred bull had been exhibited in services and obsequies, so general throughout Lower Egypt, and so imposing, that the effect upon the population must have been far more solemn and impressive than anything we can conceive of at the present day. ”

“ The people of Heth, another son of Canaan, became in later times a very powerful nation, whose history has only recently been brought to light. Their name as Hittites has been found in the Egyptian records, from which it is shown that at one time, so early as that of Moses, they were sufficiently powerful to resist the forces of the king, Rameses II., of Egypt. ”

“ After eleven years of reign Zedekiah rebelled, and then the final siege of Jerusalem took place, and the Jews were forced by starvation to yield to the king. During the delay required by the siege, Nebuchadnezzar remained at a place called Riblah (now Ribla) 200 miles north of Jerusalem and 70 miles northeast of Beirût, pleasantly located in the valley between the Lebanon ranges and on the east side of the river Orontes. This place was made sadly prominent eighteen years before by the imprisonment of Jehoahaz, the successor of Josiah, king of Judah. ”

“ Soon after however, meeting the man in the Temple, Jesus warned him as to his future life; and thus the healed man was informed, and he reported to those who inquired of him the name of his benefactor. This act of healing was performed on the Sabbath day, and the consequent command of Jesus, “Take up thy bed and walk,” was made the occasion of bitter resentment on the part of the Jews. This gave the opportunity to our Lord for uttering one of the most distinct avowals of his equality with God as his Father, and the assertion that their own Jewish Scriptures testified of him. ”

“ And from the book of Esther it is evident that the Jews prospered greatly during the reign of Xerxes.
5. The prophets, during the captivity of Judah, were earnest in their endeavors to preserve the integrity and reverence of the people, and it was largely due to them that many of the observances of the Mosaic law, and a loving remembrance of the Temple and of Jerusalem, prevailed so far as it did in spite of the idolatries of the people by whom they were surrounded. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, with Obadiah, were the prophets of the captivities. ”

“ The Ishmaelites sold Joseph in Egypt, where, through his ability to interpret the dream of Pharaoh, he became, under the king, the second ruler of Egypt and prepared for the seven years of famine which were preceded by seven years of extraordinary harvests. The famine in Egypt was attended by famine in Canaan, as also in other lands. This condition of famine caused Jacob to send his sons into Egypt for corn. ”

“ A historian undertakes to write a true history of the times of the Norman conquest. In gathering the materials for this history he visits the libraries and collections and finds an old manuscript-history of events written by some one who was on the field at the battle of Hastings, and another written by one who lived in the times soon after and had heard from living witnesses of the exploits of the warrior Hereward in his contests with the Normans. ”