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THE WALLS OF JERICHO.

1024. [Joshua vi. 4, 5.] And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns :—and it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the rams' horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout;—and the wall of the CITADEL shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up, every man straight before him.

The trumpets, to be used by the priests, were made of silver. See Num. x. 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. If we refer to Deut. xx. 19, 20, where direction is given respecting the using of trees in the siege, and examine the true import of the Hebrew terms used in this passage, we shall see reason to conclude that the walls of Jericho were beaten down by the horns of the battering-ram.

Of this instrument there were different kinds. The first simply a large beam, which the soldiers bore in their arms, and with one end of it, by main force, assailed the walls. The second is thus described by JOSEPHUS: "The ram is a vast long beam, like the mast of a ship, strengthened at one end with a head of iron, somewhat resembling that of a ram, whence it took its name. This is hung by the middle, with ropes, to another beam which lies across two posts; and hauging thus equally balanced, is by a great number of men violently thrust forward, and recoiled backward, and SO shakes the wall with its iron head; nor is there any tower or wall so thick or strong, as to resist the repeated assaults of this forcible machine". The third only differed from the former, in that it was covered with a screen to guard the soldiers.

Mr. FELIBIEN describes a fourth sort of battering-rams, which ran on wheels; and was the most perfect and effectual of them all. But it is not probable that either this, or the third sort was used on this occasion. It is more likely, that seven of the first or second kind were carried to the assault, preceded by seven priests with seven trumpets, which they might sound as a signal when the engines were to be forcibly impelled. See 2 Sam. xx. 15. JOSEPHUS (Antiq.lib. v. c. 1.) calls these simply horns. They were rams' horns, as

they were sounded for direction in playing the battering-rams.

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of which was played by a body of six thousand foot, and the other by a vast number of sailors; which may serve to give us some idea of this terrible engine. It is mentioned by the prophet EZEKIEL, chap. iv. 1, 2. and xxi. 22; and Nebuchadnezzar, we find, made use of it at the siege of Jerusalem, Univer. Ilist. vol. xvi. p. 593, Note (O).

1027. [Joshua vi. 20.] In India, Chica Nayakana Hully is a large square town, strongly fortified with mud walls, and having bruches, or cavaliers at the angles. In its centre is a square citadel, fortified in a similar manner. In the outer town a wide street runs all round, and on both hands sends off short lanes to the outer and inner walls. The houses do not really occupy the whole space within the walls: they are in number about 600, of which 80 are occupied by Brahmins. -Bellurce, also, is a large town, and both suburbs and citadel are strongly fortified with a mud-wall and ditch.

BUCHANAN, in Pinkerton's Coll. vol. viii. pp. 692, 697.

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obliged to retract on his knees the sublime truth which he had demonstrated.

This inquisition, commencing at Rome in 1204, during the first Crusades, spread rapidly over Italy, Spain and Portugal; and soon, through those nations, devastated greatly the Coasts of Asia and Africa, and more than half depopulated America. In 1566, it instigated the Dutch to cast off the Spanish yoke, and the Northern nations of Europe to separate from the Church of Rome; it also obliged those to the South who remained Catholics, to oppose the most powerful barriers to it: afterwards, like a ferocious wild beast, turning on its keepers for want of other prey, it ceased not to diffuse terror over the Countries which had given it birth; it being the will of God, by an act of universal justice, that intolerant Nations should find their punishment in the very tribunals of their intolerance.

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1034.

See his Princip. part ii. p. 445.

The earth daily inclines one of its Poles toward the sun, till its axis has formed on the plane of its annual circle an angle of twenty-three degrees and a half; it then by a retrograde motion presents to him with equal regularity the opposite Pole. (See St. PIERRE's Studies of Nature, vol. ii. p. 257.)-Whilst the earth inclines her northern pole to the natural sun over which she is revolving, she presents at the same time her upper surface to the spiritual sun under which she is passing; and whilst in appearance, the natural sun passes from east to west, the spiritual sun is passing in a contrary direction from west to east.

Similar appearances of an opposite movement occur at the southern pole, under that infernal sun which John saw black as sack-cloth of hair; Rev. vi. 12.

1035.

The LORD appears in the third heaven to the celestial angels as a sun; and to the spiritual angels as a moon. (SWEDENBORG's Arcana, n. 1529.) See Matt. xvii. 2. Isai. xxx. 26. Rev. xxi. 23. —xxii. 5. Exod. xxiv. 10.

Thy Sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy Moon withdraw itself; for the LORD shall be thy everlasting light. Isai. lx. 20.

That sun is not the LORD Himself, but from the LORD. His Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, proceeding, appear in that world as a Sun; and, subordinately, as a Moon.

The sun of the natural world is far beneath the sun of the spiritual world. It is in a mean distance: above it is the spiritual world; below it, the natural world.

Divine life is internally in the fire of the sun of the spiritual world, but externally in the fire of the sun of the natural world.

Respecting the Sun from which angels have their light and heat, it appears above the earths which they inhabit, in an elevation of about forty-five degrees, which is a middle altitude; and it appears distant from them, as the sun of this world from men. It appears also constantly in that altitude and at that distance; and neither does it move.

The spiritual suu around the LORD is similar to the sphere around every angel proceeding from his affections and thoughts. By this sphere an angel's presence is exhibited equally to those near and afar off.

1036.

1

SWEDENBORG,s Divine Love, nn. 86, 97, 153, 157, 104, 291,

In the sight of Israel.] The SUN OF HEAVEN appeared indeed to the Israelites; but, like the PILLAR OF THE CLOUD to Pharaoh and his host, it was invisible or complete darkness to the Amorites: See Exod. xiv. 20.

1037. [Joshua x. 12, 13.] Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the Israelites; and he said, In the sight of Israel stand THOU still, a Sun, upon Gibeon, and a Moon in the valley of Ajalon. And He stood still, a sun; and stayed, a moon, until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies. Thus the LORD is a sun and shield. Ps. lxxxiv. 11.-GOD is that glorious Sun, from whom (as beams) all created perfections. flow, and in whom they all concentre. (BOYLE's Seraphic Love, p. 56.)—The earth turning towards the natural sun, and from the spiritual; when the natural sun sets in the west, the spiritual sun must necessarily rise there and proceed in an inverse direction, till, after a whole spiritual day, the two suns again meet in the east, and the natural proceeds, as usual, in its regular course.

See No. 796, 579.

THE SUN GOING TEN DEGREES BACKWARD.

1038. [2 Kings xx. 11.] And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.

A similar effect is mentioned to have been produced at Metz, in Alsace, in the beginning of the eighteenth century; where, says Rosenmuller, "by the refraction of a cloud, the shadow of the gnomon was turned back to the hour and half preceding."-See the Comments of SCHEIDIUS apud Rosenmuller.

Meghaloth (Hebr.), signifying steps or stairs, is rendered by the Septuagint anabathmous (Grk.); and by the Chaldee paraphrasts a stone of time, the Jews not having a name for hours before the captivity. As the invention of gnomon-dials is attributed to Anaximander, who did not flourish till nearly 200 years after the reign of Hezekiah; we feel inclined to believe that this meghaloth must have been a kind of steep ascent, leading up to the gate of the palace, and marked at proper distances with figures, shewing the division of the day; rather than a regular piece of dial-work. Some ornaments, such as pyramids, obelisks, flower-pots (stone-lions-1 Kings x. 20), or the like, might have been placed on the rails or battlements of the ascent, whose shadow being in time observed to go over those steps, at certain periods of the day, might naturally induce some curious observer to mark down the several portions of the day; first into four parts, according to the Jewish custom of dividing it, and then into as many subdivisions as were thought proper. Thus by the refraction of a cloud or other means, the shadow of the lion or other oruament serving as a gnomon, might be thrown back again over the ten steps or degrees which it had already past.

1039.

See Univer. Hist. vol. iv. p. 84. Also Frag. to CALMET, 3d Hundr. p. 161.

The first sun-dial among the Romans, which divided the day into hours, was fixed on the temple of Quirinus by the censor L. Papyrius, about the 12th year of the wars with Pyrrhus.

See PLINY, Nat. Hist. l. i. cap. 20.

SAUL.

[1 Sam. xvi. 23.] And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from GOD was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

1040. [1 Sam. xvi. 14.] As, when the earth sends up black, noisome, and sulphureous exhalations towards the sky, they reach not heaven, nor discompose the spheres; but all

the storms and thunders they produce fall on that globe they came from, and there do all their mischief: so the wicked may wrong God indeed, yet do they really harm hut themselves by all their greatest sins, which trouble his compassion, only as they necessitate him to return from his heavenly Presence their own evil spheres in just punishments on their own heads. See BOYLE'S Seraphic Love, p. 87.

1041. [Isai. xlv. 7.] The good and true spheres sent down from the LORD through the heavens into the hells, are in their descent changed by degrees into evil and false spheres; and, as received in the hells, are direct opposites to what were sent down just as the white light of the sun is turned into disagreeable colors, even into black, in objects whose substances are interiorly in such a form, as to suffocate and extinguish the light. Thus it may appear, that things evil or injurious to man are from the spiritual sun of heaven, but that what are good and useful are turned into the things evil and injurious in hell. Hence it is evident that the LORD never did nor does create any but good and useful things; but that hell reproduces them evil and injurious.

SWEDENBORG'S Divine Love, n. 348.

1042. [1 Sam. xvi. 23.] We have an instance, in the History of the Academy of Sciences, of a musician who was cured of a violent fever by a concert played in his chamber. St. PIERRE'S Wonders of Nature and Art, vol. ii. p. 40, Note.

1043.

Pythagoras, we are told, composed music capable of removing the most violent passions, and of reclaiming vicious characters to order and moderation. (See Rational Recrea. vol. ii. p. 430.) —At Cairo there is a large hospital where the sick and insane were formerly provided with every thing that could tend to soothe their distress, not excepting even music. From the insufficiency of the funds, the music had been retrenched, but has been since restored by the charity of a private person. NIEBUHR'S Trav. vol. i. p. 61.

1044.

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Music, it seems, has a temporary effect in soothing even ferocious animals. There are dancing snakes, carried in baskets throughout Hindostan, that procure a maintenance for a set of people, who play a few simple on the flute, with which the snakes seem much delighted, and keep time by a graceful motion of the head; erecting about half their length, and following the music with gentle curves, like the undulating lines of a swan's neck. When the music ceases the snakes appear motionless; but if not immediately covered up in the baskets, the spectators are liable to fatal accidents.

FORBES' Oriental Memoirs.

1045.

Alexander, says Plutarch, did not abandon himself to those excesses which sullied the conclusion of his life, till he believed himself forsaken of Divine aid. In illustration of this melancholy sentiment, there is said to be in the gallery of Florence a fine bust of the Grecian Hero, with the face half turned toward Heaven, deeply impressed with an indignant air of chagrin and dissatisfaction. -How powerfully would such a bust illustrate the state of Saul's spirit, ungraciously deflected "from God."

See St. PIERRE'S Studies of Nature, vol. iii. p. 131.

WITCH OF ENDOR.

1046. [1 Sam. xxviii. 7.] Then said Saul to his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor.

What Saul here does is expressly forbidden, in Lev. xx. 27, and in Deut. xviii. 11. In both which places, as here, the deceiving art is denominated Ob or Aub; which, says BRYANT, in his Analysis of Antient Mythology, vol. i. p. 47, denotes "in the Egyptian language a serpent," or creeper : -as is the vine, the blood of whose grapes was formally inspected by the proficient in augury, or by a mistress of Aub. The inspector on such occasions, was called by the Hebrews and Greeks Python; by the Phonicians, Nachash. See Gen. iii. 1.

- 13. I saw aleim (Hebr.), a judge. We have here no direct proof that Saul saw Samuel; we rather have evidence that he did not. For, had he himself seen Samuel, why need he ask the woman what she saw? Why should he ask her what form or appearance the judge bore? when by looking himself, he might have actually known, not inferentially perceived merely, from the woman's description, that it was Samuel. Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 37.

21. Some have thought this woman was a ventriloquist, who could cause her voice to come, apparently, as from another at a distance. Why then needed she to absent herself, whilst Samuel apparently conversed with Saul? Yet the sacred historian affirms that the woman, as though absent during the conversation, afterwards came to Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled.-May not this, and other accounts of Heathen oracles, imputed to ventriloquism, be more rationally explained by the following fact still in existence. -"At a little distance from Dunstaffnage Castle in Scotland, is a small roofless chapel of elegant workmanship: On the south side of it is a rock, one point of which stretches towards the chapel. If a person be placed on one side of the point, and speak aloud, the sound of his voice is heard on the other side, so distinctly reverberated from the chapel, as to make one imagine it comes from a person within the ruin. It is reported, that a few years since, a man contracted an illness, which terminated in death, on hearing a sermon on mortality read to him by an alarming voice, in the dusk of the evening, by a person who had concealed himself on the opposite side of the

point. He believed that the address came from one of the dead in the chapel, waruing him to prepare for death.” GARNETT'S Tour in Scotland, vol. i. p. 138.

1047. [1 Sam. xxviii. 8.] The Pythoness, who gave the answers of the Delphian oracle, the most famous of all antiquity, washed herself and ate some laurel leaves, a plant well known for its intoxicating powers, before she ascended the tripod. Thus prepared and seated, a prodigious noise was made in the hollow body of the tripod beneath her, which added to the effect of the laurel, and an empty stomach, soon threw her into convulsions and a temporary madness; when, from the ambiguous rhapsodies she uttered, the deluded consultors were obliged either to deduct some meaning, or depart in the same ignorance in which they came.

Dr. W. ALEXANDER'S Hist. of Women, vol. ii. p. 54.

1048. [1 Sam. xviii. 15.] The pretenders to the art of necromancy, who were chiefly women, had an art of speaking with a feigned voice; so as to deceive those that applied to them, by making them believe that it was the voice of the ghost. From this art of the necromancers (ventriloquism), the popular notion seems to have arisen, that the ghost's voice was a weak, inarticulate sound, very different from the speech of the living. (Bp. LowтH, on Isai. xxix. 4.) —In this way of deception by ventriloquism, we may understand the Roman historian LIVY, when he tells us (lib, 35) that, to the great terror of the consul Domitius, an ox uttered these words, Roma, cave tibi;" that is, Guard thyself, O Rome, from impending danger.

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1049. [1 Sam. xxviii. 14.] Aristotle, in his Meteors, tells us of a person who always saw, or at least thought he saw, another man's shape before his eyes. This philosopher offers also a reason, how such an appearance might happen naturally.-HYPPOCRATES, in his Treatise Periparthenion (Grk.), shews how several, both men and women, through natural causes, have fancied they saw daimonas (Grk.), devils or spirits. But they that are versed in Optics know, says he, that there is a way, through the help of glasses concealed from the view, to make moving shadows that shall appear like ghosts, to the great terror of the ignorant beholder And it is said, he adds, that pretended astrologers and fortune-tellers cheat many by those sights.

SOLOMON.

CASAUBON.

1050. [1 Kings iv. 30, 31.] And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all

men.

Solomon was wiser than all men; because he read the Book of Nature, under the influence of

"Nature's God.” —It was impossible for him to meet there with any erroneous doctrines, any contradictory opinions, any controversial debates, or in short, any rancor, or prepossession. This library lies for ever open; and if we will but make use of our eyes, we may depend on finding, without any manner of fatigue, more wholesome admonitions than can be met with in any books, besides the Sacred Scriptures; on which indeed, the Book of Nature, when properly read, is undoubtedly the best, the only unerring Comment.

See Nat. Delin. vol. iii. p. 122.

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1051. [1 Kings iv. 29. GOD gave Solomon wisdom the sand on the sea-shore] That is, as the sand on the sea-shore incloses a great body of water, so Solomon's mind contained an ocean of knowledge.

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1054.

In Persia, those Ladies of the haram, who are supposed to have there preserved their chastity, are in due order given to the Great Lords for wives; a thing which they all covet, in order to be delivered from the confinement they are under in the Palace. These Ladies never go abroad but at night; when they are usually carried on camels to see the public spectacles without being seen themselves, in a sort of long hampers, or cradles, called kajaveh; each of which is about two feet wide, and three deep, with an arched canopy over it, covered with cloth.

See Modern Univer. Hist. vol. v.pp. 455, 484.

1055. Abul Fazel describes the haram of emperor Akber as an inclosure of such immense extent, as to contain a separate room for every one of the women, whose number exceeded five thousand; who were divided into companies, and a proper employment assigned to each individual. Over each of these companies a woman was appointed darogha; and one was selected for the control of the whole, in order that the affairs of the haram might be conducted with the same regularity and good government as the other departments of the state.

See FORBES' Orient. Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 137.

1056. [1 Kings xi. 18-20.] In the island of Formosa, and among some tribes of the Peruvians, daughters are more regarded than sons, because, as soon as a woman is married, contrary to the custom of other countries, she brings her husband home with her to her father's house, and be becomes one of the family; so that parents derive support and family-strength from the marriage of a daughter; whereas sons, on their marriage, leave the family for ever. Dr. W. ALEXANDER's Hist. of Women, vol. i. p. 186.

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1059. that the phrase

It had been conjectured by Mr. BARUH, his mother's name, &c. when expressed on a king's accession to the throne, at the beginuing of his history, does not necessarily refer to his natural mother.

This conjecture has been verified by the following extract: -On this occasion, says BRUCE, the king crowned his mother Malacotawit, conferring on her the dignity and title of Iteghe, or king's mother, as regent and governess of the king when under age.

2 Chron. xi. 21, 22. Ps. xlv. 9.

1060.

Trav. vol. ii. p. 531. See BURDER, vol. ii. p. 148.

Maachah was Asa's grandmother, and not his mother as described in 2 Chron. xv. 16: if however, we look on the expression of king's mother to be only a title of dignity, all the difficulty will cease; for this Maachah was really Abija's mother, but when Abija came to be king, the dignity of king's mother, or the first in the rank of the royal family, was given to Micaiah, the daughter of Uriel, of Gibeah; and afterwards, on the death of Micaiah, that dignity devolved to Maachah, and she enjoyed it, at the accession of Asa her grandson, who afterwards degraded her for her idolatry. (RAPHAEL BARUH.)—This title of king's mother, or queen, will receive considerable illustration from the following extracts:

The Oloo Kani is not governess of the Crimea. This title, the literal translation of which is Great Queen, simply denotes a dignity in the Haram, which the Khan usually confers

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