Now to what other beginning of the sabbatic cycles will the same conclusion apply so well as to this? Let the various dates, which the most eminent chronologers have fixed upon as the years of the Exodus, be tried by this test; whether they will accord with the hypothesis that the sixteenth of Hezekiah, and B. C. 709-708, were each of them coincident, and each of them a sabbatic year. The date of Usher, and of the English Bible, B. C. 1491, supposes the Eisodus B.C. 1451: the commencement of the sabbatic cycle B. C. 1444: and the first sabbatic year, as such, B. C. 1438-1437. Referred to this date, the hundred and fifth sabbatic year was B. C. 710-709, the fifteenth of Hezekiah not the sixteenth. This may be an approximation to a coincidence, it is true; but had it even amounted to an actual coincidence, it would yet be deduced from a false principle. For the date of the Exodus, as so assumed, is much too late: and though archbishop Usher, in every subsequent step, had reasoned precisely as we have done, the original difference between our respective dates, B. C. 1560. and B. C. 1491, for the Exodus, and B. C. 1507. and B. C. 1438, for the first sabbatic year, would be preserved throughout. This difference in either case is sixty-nine; or just one year less than an exact multiple of seven so that sabbatic years as calculated on the principles of such a system would necessarily be just one year in anticipation of the corresponding years in But the truth is that, as one error will sometimes rectify another, so, though according to this chronology the date of the Exodus may be fixed sixtynine years too late, the date of the beginning of the reign of Solomon is placed sixty-nine years too soon. I mean that whatsoever system placed the Exodus B. C. 1491, would be bound, if it proceeded regularly * Vide Dr. Hales' Analysis, i. 9. 22.

ours.

and justly, and according to the plain intimations of the Bible itself, to place the beginning of the reign of Solomon B. C. 946: whereas the Bible chronology has placed it B. C. 1015. This error has consequently so far corrected the other; and for the subsequent period, between the first of Solomon and the sixteenth of Hezekiah, it would be possible for the system of Usher to go along with any other, even if that were the true, with no other difference between them than one or two years at the utmost. But, for the antecedent period before and after the Exodus to the first of Solomon, the utmost difference might prevail between them: and this is a part of the system of Usher, which in my opinion, must be given up as indefensible.

I have dwelt thus long on the sabbatic year which coincided with the sixteenth of Hezekiah, because it is the most authentic instance of any such year upon record and one such year being clearly determined, any others, comprehended within a given number of years, either backwards or forwards, are necessarily determined likewise. But we have had direct proof from Josephus of sabbatic years which began B. C. 163, B. C. 135, B. C. 37, respectively; and indirect proofs from him, and from other sources, of similar years which began B. C. 23, A. D. 41, A. D. 55, and A. D. 69. There was only not direct proof also from the Bible of a sabbatic year which began B. C. 590. All these must actually have been such years, if any of them were; and they would any of them be such, if B. C. 709-708, or what is the same thing, B. C. 1507 -1506, was so. Surely this cumulative proof must be considered to possess some weight, if it is not acknowledged to be demonstrative, upon the particular question whether the sixteenth of Hezekiah coincided with B. C. 709, and both with a sabbatic year, or not.

Is there any reason to suppose that sabbatic years, after the captivity, did not proceed just as they had done before it? and if not, must not the proof of a sabbatic year, after the captivity, be decisive as to what years were or were not so, before it? The Jews had inspired and infallible directors in the prophets, such as Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, and in such persons as Ezra and Nehemiah, after the captivity as well as before it, who could not fail to have directed them right on this point, as well as upon any other; if there had been the slightest uncertainty about it. But that there was no uncertainty, at least in the time of Nehemiah, appears from what has been shewn elsewhere and if there was no uncertainty in the time of Nehemiah, B. C. 444, I do not see that there could have been any, B. C. 163, in the time of the Maccabees. John Hyrcanus, one of that number, was considered by Josephus, and by the Jewish church generally, in the light of a prophet, or of a person endowed with supernatural gifts: the former must have supposed him possessed of the Urim and Thummim itself: for he asserts in the Antiquities, that the continuance of this mode of communication with the Deity ceased only two hundred years before the time when he was writing; which being at the earliest, U. C. 846, A.D. 93, places the cessation in question B. C. 108; only six years before the true close of the reign of Hyrcanusc. Yet we find Hyrcanus himself celebrating a sabbatic year, which coincided with B. C. 135-134.

The coincidences in question are in fact so numerous and so critical, as justly to authorize the inference that they could not be produced by chance; they must have been the effect of truth. How often do they stop short on the very verge of a contradiction between the result c Appendix, Dissertation iv. vol. iii. 352.

b iii. viii. 9.

of the calculations, and the matter of fact! That is to say, how often is there proof from contemporary history of a seed-time or an harvest in a particular year, which turns out on consideration to be just in the sixth year of the cycle! in entire harmony therefore with the principles of a system which places its sabbatic years in the year ensuing, but diametrically at variance with the arrangements of any other, which places those years in the year before.

We cannot illustrate these assertions better, than by the exhibition of a table of sabbatic years, which shall run parallel to the duration of the Hebrew monarchy, beginning B. C. 1094, in the first year of Saul, and ending B. C. 589, in the last year but one of Zedekiah; and constructed according to the principles in question. The first sabbatic year being B. C. 1507-1506, the sixtieth was B. C. 1094-1093. For 1507-1094 = 413 59 × 7. Hence the series will begin with the sixtieth year.

=

Table of Sabbatic years, beginning B. C. 1094. and ending B. C. 589.

With regard to the above details, the first remark which we may make is this; that had the same table been conducted downwards from B. C. 1507, the thirtysecond sabbatic year would have been found to coincide with B. C. 1290-1289: for 1507-1290=217= 31 × 7. Now, according to the principle laid down, that of reckoning the last year of a particular servitude as the first year of the deliverance from it; if we consider B. C. 1499, the beginning of the servitudes in question, it will be found upon computation that B. C. 1290, was the last year of the servitude to the Midianites, and therefore the first of the administration of Gideon. The angel who commissioned Gideon appeared to him at the time of wheat-harvest d; that

d Judges vi. 11.