Necho II

“ From what Jeremiah tells us of the attitude of the prophets in the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, we must infer that many of them strengthened the king in his intention not to endure an encroachment such as that of the Pharaoh. The Chronicler relates that Necho himself endeavored to dissuade Josiah from the unequal contest. But [uselessly] . ... The decisive battle was fought in the valley of Megiddo: Judah was defeated; Josiah perished. ... After the victory in the valley of Megiddo and the death of Josiah, Necho was master of the kingdom of Judah. ”

“ Jehoahaz, or Shallum, his third son, a wicked young man, only reigned while Necho was fighting a battle with the Babylonians on the Euphrates, and then was carried off in chains to Egypt, while Necho set up Eliakim, or Jehoiakim, another brother, in his stead. Jehoiakim was idolatrous, cruel, and violent; he persecuted the prophets, and did everything to draw on himself the punishment of Heaven. Necho, making another invasion, was defeated by the great Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and hunted back by him into Egypt. ”

“ Nebuchadrezzar left his father-in-law to complete the destruction of the glory of Assyria, and, flushed with victory, marched at once against the Egyptian invader.
Necho was prepared for this. He broke camp at Riblah and proceeded to meet Nebuchadrezzar. The Babylonian and Egyptian armies faced each other at Carchemish by the Euphrates, in 605; and the result once more cast Judah into the political balance.
In the meantime, Jeremiah was forced back to his labors by the conditions at Jerusalem. Necho knew what he wanted when he substituted Jehoiakim for Jehoahaz on the throne of Judah. ”

“ He was in all probability thought fitter than any of his brethren to make head against the king of Egypt. He was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned about three months only in Jerusalem, in the year of the world 3395. King Necho, at his return from the expedition against Carchemish, provoked at the people of Judah for having placed this prince upon the throne without his consent, sent for him to Riblah, in Syria, divested him of the kingdom, loaded him with chains, and sent him into Egypt, where he died, Jer. ”

“ They come all of them for violence; their faces are set eagerly as the east wind, and they gather captives as the sand. Yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision unto him: he derideth every stronghold: for he heapeth up dust and taketh it. Then shall he sweep by as a wind, and shall pass over the guilty, even he whose might is his god.” Nebuchadrezzar’s army must have presented a spectacle as strange as did that of Necho. ”

“ Headed by Necho of Sais, they invited the Ethiopians to return; but the plot was discovered, and Necho and his fellow-conspirators sent in chains to Nineveh. Sais, Mendes, and other cities of northern Egypt were sacked, and Taharka, who had advanced as far as Thebes and even Memphis, fled to Ethiopia and there died. Meanwhile Necho had been pardoned and loaded with honours by the Assyrian king; his son, who took an Assyrian name, was made satrap of Athribis, near the modern Benha, and the satraps of the Delta henceforward remained faithful to their Assyrian master. ”

“ Nebuchadrezzar again placed himself at the head of his troops; Necho, warned of his projects, hastened to meet him with all the forces at his disposal, and, owing probably to the resistance offered by the garrisons which he possessed in the Hittite fortresses, he had time to continue his march as far as the Euphrates. The two armies encountered each other at Carchemish ”

“ Between the Egyptian Nekôs and his grandson Apriês—Pharaoh Necho and Pharaoh Hophra of the Old Testament—on the one side, and the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar on the other, Judæa and Phenicia form the intermediate subject of quarrel: and the political independence of the Phenician towns is extinguished never again to be recovered. ”

“ It is true that this combination is apparently confirmed by the fact, that during that time the Egyptian king Necho forced his way into Palestine and Syria, and after subduing all Syria, advanced to the Euphrates; since this advance of the Egyptian is most easily explained on the supposition that Nabopolassar was so occupied with the war against Nineveh, that he could not offer any resistance to the enterprise of Necho. ”

“ A like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around Jehoiakim similar to those at the court of Ahaz and Hezekiah a century earlier. The populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials, in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the Chaldæans by earthly means, and since Necho declared himself an implacable enemy of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with Egypt. ”

“ Psammetich I, a Libyan soldier, recognizing in the crumbling of Assyrian power his own opportunity, made himself master of the country and established a new dynasty in Egypt. His son and successor, Pharaoh Necho, grasped the chance given him by Nabopolassar's attack on Nineveh to win back the provinces along the Mediterranean, that had been Egyptian before they were conquered by Assyria.
Without further ado, therefore, Necho, with a great army, started north, to conquer all of Assyria that he could and add it to his own Empire. This meant an invasion of Judah. ”

“ Evil [Pg 327] shall go forth from nation to nation, and the slain of Jehovah will be in that day from one end of the earth to the other; they shall not be lamented, nor buried, they shall be dung upon the ground." [599]
At Karchemish Necho had lost all the fruits of his struggles in Syria. He did not venture to engage in a second battle for the possession of Syria, but retired to the borders of Egypt. In Jerusalem a day of fasting was kept at the approach of the Babylonian army. More than three years and eight months had passed since Necho made Jehoiakim king of Judah. ”

“ In order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it would have been necessary for Egypt to devote a considerable part of its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country preferred to concentrate all its energies on its Tyrian policy. Necho certainly possessed the sympathies of the Tyrians, who had transferred their traditional hatred of the Assyrians to the Chaldæans. He could also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party in Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as among the Nabatæans and the Arabs of Kedar ”

“ In 604 Necho of Egypt marched with an army to the Euphrates, and Nabopolassar sent his son, Nebuchadrezzar II, to meet him. Nebuchadrezzar defeated Necho at the battle of Carchemish, and hotly pursued him toward Egypt. (See Jer. 46.) The pursuit was, however, interrupted by the death of Nabopolassar, and the recall of Nebuchadrezzar to Babylon to be crowned as king. The defeat of Necho had made Judah a Babylonian vassal-state. Nebuchadrezzar ruled until 562 B. C., and raised Babylon to a height of power which rivaled that attained under the great Hammurapi. ”

“ The Egyptian nation very soon came to feel how oppressive this new dynasty was, when Necho (616-597) , the son and successor of Psammetichus, renewed the project of Ramses-Miamun, to construct a Suez canal, and tore away 120,000 of the natives of the land from their homes, sending them to wear out their lives in forced labour of the most wearisome kind. ”

“ It is probably to this battle that Herodotus alludes when he says that Necho overcame the Syrians at Magdôlos. The identity of Magdôlos and Megiddo, accepted by almost all historians, was disputed by Gutschmid, who sees in the Magdôlos of Herodotus the Migdol of the Syro-Egyptian frontier, and in the engagement itself, an engagement of Necho with the Assyrians and their Philistine allies; also by Th. Reinach, who prefers to identify Magdôlos with one of the Migdols near Ascalon, and considers this combat as fought against the Assyrian army of occupation. ”

“ The vast increase of the population of Ethiopia, and a wish of its rulers to possess more territory, induced them to send expeditions down the Nile, and towards the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of these adventurers, as early as B. C. 885, took up their abode on the Mediterranean coast, and founded the place which in later years became the great city of Carthage. Necho, king of Egypt, a man distinguished for his spirit of enterprise, sent an expedition (B. C. 616) around the African coast. He employed Phœnecian navigators. ”

“ Jehoiakim was placed upon the throne as the nominee [Pg 64] and tributary of Pharaoh Necho; but he had the address or good fortune to retain his authority under Nebuchadnezzar, by transferring his allegiance to the new suzerain of Western Asia. When a suitable opportunity offered, the unwilling and discontented vassal naturally "turned and rebelled against" his lord. ”

“ The two new states gradually increased in power by successive conquests, each annexing by degrees the ancient provinces of Assyria nearest to its own frontier. ** This seems to be implied by the terms in which Berosus speaks of Necho: he considers him as a rebel satrap over the provinces of Egypt, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia, and enumerates Egypt in conjunction with Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia among the dependencies of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar. ”

“ They carried some of the articles which they brought from India through the straits of Babelmandel into Abyssinia and Egypt; some they transported to Babylon through the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates; and some by the way of the Red Sea to the port of Eziongeber. They thus became rich; though it is possible their wealth may have been too much magnified by the ancients. The eminence of the Egyptians, as a commercial nation, commences with the reign of Necho. Their commerce, nevertheless, was not great, till Alexander had destroyed Tyre and built Alexandria. ”

“ Pharaoh-Necho has offered us the help of his armies. He wishes us to join him in breaking the might of Ashur, and we shall do it, people of Jerusalem.
The Crowd
On against Ashur.—War with Chaldea.—Hail Abimelech!
A Warrior
We shall drive them before us like sheep. They have grown soft in the houses of the women, and their king has never worn harness.
A Voice
That is false.
The Warrior
Who says it is false?
The Voice
I say so. I have been in Babylon and I have seen Nebuchadnezzar. He is a mighty man of valor, and his soldiers have no equals. ”

“ In consequence of this, Nebuchadnezzar took the field against Hither Asia in the third year of the reign of Jehioakim, and in the first month of the fourth year of Jehoiakim slew Pharaoh-Necho at Carchemish and pursued his army to the confines of Egypt, and in the ninth month of the same year took Jerusalem and made king Jehoiakim his subject. ”

“ The attempt of Pharaoh Necho to win for Egypt the inheritance of Assyria was overthrown at the battle of Carchemish, and when Nebuchadrezzar succeeded his father in B. C. 604, he found himself the undisputed lord of Western Asia. Palestine was coerced in 602, and the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 laid a way open for the invasion of Egypt, which took place twenty years later. Tyre also underwent a long siege of thirteen years, but it is doubtful whether it was taken after all. Babylon was now enriched with the spoils of foreign conquest. ”

“ The Said hailed his return with joy, and the inhabitants, massed upon either bank of the river, acclaimed him as he glided past them on his boat: “Go in peace! mayest thou have peace! Restore life to Egypt! Rebuild the ruined temples, set up once more the statues and emblems of the deities! Reestablish the endowments raised to the gods and goddesses, even the offerings to the dead! Restore the priest to his place, that he may minister at all the rites!”
The Assyrian officials and the princes of the north, with Necho at their head, were drawn up beneath the walls of Memphis to defy him. ”

“ Egypt was reorganised under Assyrian rule, and measures taken to prevent the return of the Ethiopians. It was divided into twenty satrapies, the native princes being appointed to govern them for their Assyrian master. At their head was placed Necho, the vassal king of Sais. Esar-haddon now returned to Nineveh, and on the cliffs of the Nahr el-Kelb, near Beyrout, he engraved a record of his conquest of Egypt and Thebes by the side of the monument whereon, seven centuries previously, Ramses ii. ”

“ The tradition of Egypt imagines a voluntary retirement of the king of Ethiopia, or his abdication of the government of Egypt, and then represents the Egyptians as setting up 12 princes in the place of one: we have already seen that 20 were set up by Esarhaddon, and retained by Assurbanipal. Manetho's list says nothing either of the Assyrian dominion, or of the twelve; in it the rule of the last Ethiopian is followed by the dynasty of the Saites, two forefathers of Necho, and then by Necho and Psammetichus. ”

“ The conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, after the attitude which Pharaoh Necho assumed towards the Babylonian empire, and even attempted to maintain in the time of Zedekiah by sending an army to the relief of Jerusalem when besieged by the Chaldeans, is not only extremely probable in itself, but confirmed by testimony outside the Bible. Even if no great importance can be attached to the notice of Megasthenes, handed down by Strabo (xv. 1. 6) and Josephus (c. Ap. i. 20) : “he says that he (Nebuchadnezzar) conquered the greater part of Libya and Iberia;” ”