terest, he had the skill to use, as well as the happiness to get. He turned his lands to the best use, keeping ploughmen and dressers of vines, in grounds convenient for such husbandry. In other places he had cattle feeding, whereof he might well keep great store, having won so much from the Ammonites and Arabians, that had abundance of waste ground serving for pasturage. For defence of his cattle and herdsmen, he built towers in the wilderness. He also digged many cisterns or ponds. Josephus calls them watercourses; but in such dry grounds, it was enough that he found water by digging in the most likely places. If by these towers he so commanded the water, that none could, without his consent, relieve themselves therewith, questionless he took the only course by which he might securely hold the lordship over all the wilderness; it being hardly passable, by reason of the extreme drought, when the few springs therein found are left free to the use of travellers.

Besides all this cost, and the building both of Eloth by the Red sea, and of sundry towns among the Philistines, he repaired the wall of Jerusalem, which Joash had broken down, and fortified it with towers, whereof some were an hundred and fifty cubits high.

The state of Israel did never so flourish as at this time, since the division of the twelve tribes into two kingdoms. For as Uzziah prevailed in the south, so (if not more) Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of the ten tribes, enlarged his border on the north; where, obtaining many victories against the Syrians, he won the royal city of Damascus, and he won Hamath, with all the country thereabout from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the wilderness; that is, (as the most expound it,) unto the vast deserts of Arabia, the end whereof was undiscovered. So the bounds of Israel in those parts were, in the time of this Jeroboam, the same (or not much narrower) which they had been in the reign of David.

But it was not for the piety of Jeroboam that he thrived

so well, for he was an idolater; it was only the compassion

22 Kings xiv. 25, 28.

which the Lord had on Israel, seeing the exceeding bitter affliction whereinto the Aramites had brought his people, which caused him to alter the success of war, and to throw the victorious Aramites under the feet of those whom they had so cruelly oppressed. The line of Jehu, to which God had promised the kingdom of a Israel unto the fourth generation, was now not far from the end; and now again it was invited unto repentance by new benefits, as it had been at the beginning. But the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat was held so precious, that neither the kingdom itself, given to him by God, was able to draw Jehu from that politic idolatry; nor the misery falling upon him and his posterity, to bring them to a better course of religion; nor yet, at the last, this great prosperity of Jeroboam the son of Joash to make him render the honour that was due to the only Giver of victory. Wherefore the promise of God, made unto Jehu, that his sons, unto the fourth generation, should sit on the throne of Israel, was not enlarged; but, being almost expired, gave warning of the approaching end, by an accident (so strange, that we, who find no particulars recorded, can hardly guess at the occasions) foregoing the last accomplishment.

When Jeroboam the son of Joash, after a victorious reign of forty-one years, had ended his life, it seems in all reason that Zachariah his son should forthwith have been admitted to reign in his stead; the nobility of that race having gotten such a lustre by the immediate succession of four kings, that any competitor, had the crown passed by election, must needs have appeared base; and the virtue of the last king having been so great, as might well serve to lay the foundation of a new house, much more to establish the already confirmed right of a family so rooted in possession. All this notwithstanding, two or three and twenty years did pass, before Zachariah the son of Jeroboam was by uniform consent received as king. The true original causes hereof were to be found at Dan and Bethel, where the golden calves did stand: yet second instruments of this a 2 Kings x. 30.

disturbance are likely not to have been wanting, upon which the wisdom of man was ready to cast an eye. Probable it is that the captains of the army (who afterwards slew one another so fast, that in fourteen years there reigned five kings) did now by headstrong violence rent the kingdom asunder, holding each what he could, and either despising or hating some qualities in Zachariah; until, after many years, wearied with dissension, and the principal of them perhaps being taken out of the way by death, for want of any other eminent man, they consented to yield all quietly to the son of Jeroboam. That this anarchy lasted almost twenty-three years, we find by the difference of time between the fifteenth year of Uzziah, which was the last of Jeroboam's forty-first, (his twenty-seventh concurring with the first of Uzziah,) and the thirty-eighth of the same Uzziah, in the last six months whereof Zachariah reigned in Samaria. There are some indeed, that by supposing Jeroboam to have reigned with his father eleven years, do cut off the interregnum in Juda, (before mentioned,) and by the same reason abridge this anarchy, that was before the reign of Zachariah in Israel. Yet they leave it twelve years long, which is time sufficient to prove that the kingdom of the ten tribes was no less distempered than as is already noted. But I choose rather to follow the more common opinion, as concurring more exactly with the times of other princes reigning abroad in the world, than this doubtful conjecture, that gives to Jeroboam fifty-two years, by adding three quarters of his father's reign unto his own, which was itself indeed so long, that he may well seem to have begun it very young; for I do not think that God blessed this idolater both with a longer reign and with a longer life, than he did his servant David.

Thus much being spoken of the time wherein the throne of Israel was void, before the reign of Zachariah, little may suffice to be said of his reign itself, which lasted but a little while. Six months only was he king, in which time he declared himself a worshipper of the golden calves, which was enough to justify the judgment of God, whereby he was slain. He was the last of Jehu's house, being (inclusively)

the first of that line; which may have been some cause of the troubles impeaching his orderly succession; the prophecy having determined that race in the fourth generation. But (besides that God's promise was extended unto the utmost) there was no warrant given to Sallum, or to any other, for the death of Zachariah, as has been given to Jehu for the slaughter of Jehoram and for the eradication of Ahab's house.

Zachariah having been six months a king, was then slain by Sallum, who reigned after him the space of a month in Samaria. What this Sallum was, I do not find; save only that he was a traitor, and the son of one Jabesh, whereby his father got no honour. It seems that he was one of those who in time of faction had laboured for himself; and now, when all other competitors were sitten down, thought easily to prevail against that king, in whose person the race of Jehu was to fail. Manifest it is that Sallum had a strong party; for Tiphsah, or Thapsa, and the coast thereof even from Tirzah, where Menahem, his enemy and supplanter, then lay, refused to admit, as king in his stead, the man that murdered him. Yet at the end of one month Sallum received the reward of his treason, and was slain by Menahem, who reigned in his place.

Menahem the son of Gadi reigned after Sallum ten years. In opposition to Sallum, his hatred was deadly and inhuman; for he not only destroyed Tiphsah, and all that were therein or thereabouts, but he ripped up all their women with child, because they did not open their gates and let him in. Had this cruelty been used in revenge of Zachariah's death, it is like that he would have been as earnest in procuring unto him his father's crown when it was first due. But in performing that office there was used such long deliberation, that we may plainly discover ambition, disdain, and other private passions to have been the causes of this beastly outrage.

In the time of Menahem, and (as it seems) in the beginning of his reign, Pul, king of Assyria, came against the 2 Kings xv. 13.

b

land of Israel; whom this new king appeased with a thousand talents of silver, levied upon all the substantial men in his country. With this money the Israelite purchased, not only the peace of his kingdom, but his own establishment therein; some factious man (belike) having either invited Pul thither, or (if he came uncalled) sought to use his help in deposing this ill-beloved king. Josephus reports of this Menahem, that his reign was no milder than his entrance. But after ten years his tyranny ended with his life, and Pekahia his son occupied his room.

C

Of this Pekahia the story is short, for he reigned only two years; at the end whereof he was slain by Peka, the son of Kemalia, whose treason was rewarded with the crown of Israel, as, in time coming, another man's treason against himself shall be. There needs no more to be said of Menahem and his son, save that they were both of them idolaters, and the son (as we find in Josephus) like to his father in cruelty. Concerning Pul the Assyrian king, who first opened unto those northern nations the way into Palæstina, it will shortly follow, in order of the story, to deliver our opinion: whether he were that Belosus (called also Beleses, and by some Phul Belochus) who joined with Arbaces the Median against Sardanapalus, or whether he were some other man. At the present it is more fit that we relate the end of Uzziah's life, who outlived the happiness wherein we left him.

SECT. II.

The end of Uzziah's reign and life.

AS the zeal of Jehoiada, that godly priest, was the mean to preserve the lineage of David in the person of Joash, so it appears that the care of holy men was not wanting to Uzziah, to bring him up, and advance him to the crown of Juda, when the hatred borne to his father Amaziah had endangered his succession. For it is said of Uzziah, that he sought God in the days of Zachariah, (which understood the visions of God,) and when as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.

c Jos. Ant. 1. 9. c. 11.

d Jos. ibid.

2 Chron. xxvi. 5.