3 Chap. 21. 6.

* Otherwise called Ahaziah, verse 1; and Jehvahaz, chap. 21. 17. 6 Heb. treading down. 7 2 Kings 9.7. 82 Kings 9. 27.

2 Kings 11. 1.

7 And the Levites shall compass the king round about, every man with his weapons in his hand; and whosoever else cometh into the house, he shall be put to death: but be ye with the king when he cometh in, and when he goeth out.

8 So the Levites and all Judah did according to all things that Jehoiada the priest had commanded, and took every man his men that were to come in on the sabbath, with them that were to go out on the sabbath for Jehoiada the priest dismissed not

the courses.

9 Moreover Jehoiada the priest delivered to the captains of hundreds spears, and bucklers, and shields, that had been king David's, which were in the house of God.

10 And he set all the people, every man having his weapon in his hand, from the right side of the temple to the left side of the temple, along by the altar and the temple, by the king round about.

11 Then they brought out the king's son, and put upon him the crown, and gave him the testimony, and made him king. And Jehoiada and his sons anointed him, and said, 'God save the king.

12 ¶ Now when Athaliah heard the noise of the people running and praising the king, she came to the people into the house of the LORD:

13 And she looked, and, behold, the king stood at his pillar at the entering in, and the princes and the trumpets by the king: and all the people of the land rejoiced, and sounded with trumpets, also the singers with instruments of musick, and such as taught to sing praise. Then Athaliah rent her clothes, and said, "Treason, Treason.

14 Then Jehoiada the priest brought out the captains of hundreds that were set over the host, and said unto them, Have her forth of the ranges: and whoso followeth her, let him be slain with the sword. For the priest said, Slay her not in the house of the LORD.

15 So they laid hands on her; and when she was come to the entering of the horse gate by the king's house, they slew her there.

16 And Jehoiada made a covenant between him, and between all the people, and between the king, that they should be the LORD's people.

17 Then all the people went to the house of Baal, and brake it down, and brake his altars and his images in pieces, and 'slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars.

18 Also Jehoiada appointed the offices of the house of the LORD by the hand of the priests the Levites, whom David had 10distributed in the house of the LORD, to offer the burnt offerings of the LORD, as it is written in the "law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing, as it was ordained by David.

19 And he set the "porters at the gates of the house of the LORD, that none which was unclean in any thing should enter in.

20 And he took the captains of hundreds, and the nobles, and the governors of the people, and all the people of the land, and brought down the king from the house of the LORD: and they came through the high gate into the king's house, and set the king upon the throne of the kingdom.

21 And all the people of the land rejoiced: and the city was quiet, after that they had slain Athaliah with the sword.

4 Heb. shoulder. 5 Heb, house. 6 Deut. 17. 18. 7 Heb. Let the king live. 8 Heb. conspiracy. 9 Deut. 13. 9. 10 1 Chron. 24. 1. 18 Heb. by the hands of David, 131 Chron. 26. 1, &c.

11 Num. 23. 2.

Verse 8. "Jehoiada dismissed not the courses."-The meaning of this, of course, is that the high-priest, in order to have the stronger force at his disposal, detained the Levitical course, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have returned home, or at least would have gone off duty when its week of service had expired.

11. "Put upon him the crown."-We know that crowns were worn by the Hebrew kings; but this is the only incident in Scripture from which we learn that setting a crown on the head was part of the ceremonies of inauguration. There is no part of the Bible in which these ceremonies are so particularly described as in the chapter now before us.

-"Gave him the testimony.”—“ Gave him" is supplied in our version: omitting this, the text reads, "put upon him the crown and the (adah);" which therefore probably means some part of the royal attire, ornaments, or regalia, as some of the Jewish interpreters explain, and as the signification which the word bears in several other passages of Scripture warrants.

"God save the king."- Literally, "Long live the king!" This seems to have been the usual shout of loyalty among the Hebrews. In personally addressing the king, we find this expression put superlatively, as "Let the king live for ever!" The same thing precisely is meant in both expressions-the wish for a protracted life; but the latter was, in a personal address, the more respectful and complimentary phrase, which was never understood in its literal force. This style of address was used to the Hebrew, Babylonian, and Persian kings. (1 Kings i. 31; Neh. ii. 3; Dan. ii. 4.) The same is also the proper force of our popular cry, " for ever!" And "God save the king"

implies the desire for the prolongation of the king's life; and by this therefore our translation properly renders the Hebrew expression. Indeed, so similar are the cries of loyalty everywhere, that nearly all the versions find a national cry of equivalent meaning. Thus the Vulgate has here," Vivat rex!"-the French versions, "Vive le roi!"—and so

of others.

13. "The king stood at his pillar.”—Some think that, instead of "at his pillar, we should understand "upon a stage" or "scaffold;" perhaps the brazen scaffold which Solomon erected, and upon which he stood at the dedication of the Temple. We incline to join both interpretations, and suppose that Joash stood upon a sort of scaffold or throne placed against a pillar. We cannot suppose that he stood upon the ground, for then, being a child and surrounded by such a number of persons, Athaliah could scarcely have seen him when she entered. In Homer there are several allusions to the custom of setting a throne against a column.

10 Or, Jozachar, 2 Kings 12. 21. 18 Or, commentary.

Verse 25. "The sepulchres of the kings."-These sepulchres were doubtless excavations in the rock; and as such sepulchres are, in the ordinary course of things, imperishable, it is but reasonable to suppose that they may still be found in some of the numerous and remarkable sepulchral excavations which engage the attention of those who visit Jerusalem. The excavation, or rather series of excavations, which are now indicated to travellers as the tombs of the Hebrew kings, occur about a mile to the north-west of the present city. They have been noticed by most travellers; but as none of their accounts are comparable to that left by Maundrell, we cannot do better than copy his description, adding a few further particulars from other sources.

"The next place we came to was those famous grots, called the sepulchres of the kings, but for what reason they go by that name is hard to resolve... Whoever was buried here, this is certain, that the place itself discovers so great expense both of labour and treasure, that we may well suppose it to have been the work of kings." The road down to the tombs is cut in the rock, and the entrance is by a large door also cut in the rock. It leads into a deep excavation, about fifty feet long, forty wide, and about twenty deep. (Richardson.) This open court is excavated in a stratum of white limestone (Clarke, who calls it "a square of thirty yards.") Heaps of sand and earth have accumulated along the sides of this court; and the whole has much the appearance of a sand pit. (Richardson.) The west end seems to have been ornamented with the greatest care; and there appears the mouth of a cavern twelve yards wide, exhibiting over the entrance an architrave, with a beautifully sculptured frieze. (See the cut.) Entering this cavern, and turning to the left, a second architrave appears above the entrance to another cavern, but so near the floor of the cave as barely to admit the passage of a man's body through the aperture. (Clarke.) We shall return to Maundrell for the description of the interior. After likewise mentioning this difficulty of entering, he proceeds: "But within you arrive at a large fair room, about seven or eight yards square, cut out of the natural rock. Its sides and ceiling are so exactly square, and its angles so just, that no architect with levels and plummets could build a room more regular: and the whole is so firm and entire, that it may be called a chamber hollowed out of one piece of marble. From this room you pass into (I think) six more, one within another, all of the same fashion with the first. Of these the two innermost are deeper than the rest, having a second descent of about six or seven steps into them.

"In every one of these rooms, except the first, were coffins of stone placed in niches in the sides of the chambers. They had at first been covered with handsome lids and carved with garlands; but now most of them were broke in pieces by sacrilegious hands. The sides and ceiling of the rooms were always dropping with the moist damps condensing upon them: to remedy which nuisance, and to preserve these chambers of the dead polite and clean, there was in each room a small channel cut in the floor, which served to drain the drops that fall constantly into it. "But the most surprising thing belonging to these subterraneous chambers was their doors; of which there is only one that remains hanging. It consisted of a plank of stone about six inches in thickness, and in its other dimensions equalling the size of an ordinary door, or somewhat less. It is carved in such a manner as to resemble a piece of wainscot. The stone of which it was made was visibly of the same kind with the whole rock; and it turned upon two hinges in the nature of axles. These hinges were of the same entire piece of stone with the door, and were contained in two holes of the immoveable rock, one at the top and the other at the bottom." (Journey,' p. 76-78, edit. 1707.) We have pleasure in transcribing this interesting description, not only as explaining the immediate subject, but as contributing to elucidate many of the allusions which the Scriptures contain to the higher class of excavated sepulchres. To complete the account, we add a few further particulars from Clarke, Richardson, and Buckingham.

The first, or great chamber, which is nearly filled up with rubbish, has one door-way leading from it on the right but no corresponding one on the left, and two immediately opposite to the passage of entrance, making in all three doors which communicate with other chambers within. The famous stone doors are pannelled so as to resemble exactly our own doors of wood: the one door, which was hanging in Maundrell's time, is now fallen like the others. In each of the three inner chambers there are smaller divisions for the reception of the dead, with benches and sarcophagi, and niches of a triangular form (for lamps probably) above the tombs. (Buckingham.) The receptacles for the dead bodies are not much larger than our coffins, but have the more regular form of oblong parallelograms, thereby differing from the usual appearance presented in the sepulchral crypts of the country, where the soros, although of the same form, is of very considerable size, and resembles a large cistern. (Clarke.) The innermost chamber, to which there is a descent, seems to have been the most honourable part of this great sepulchre. It is adorned above all the rest, and has the mantling vine, with clusters of grapes, twined round the pilasters, and inscribed on the sarcophagi. (Richardson.) The most interesting object it contains is the lid of a white marble coffin. "This," says Clarke, "was entirely covered with most beautiful sculpture; but, like all the other sculptured work about the place, it represented nothing of the human figure, nor any animal, but consisted entirely of foliage and flowers, and principally of the leaves and branches of the vine."

We have been thus particular in describing these remarkable excavations, because certainly they are among the very few remains which we can safely say to have belonged to the times which the Scripture history embraces. It has been strongly questioned whether these be really the sepulchres of the kings, so often mentioned in the historical books, principally because these sepulchres are said to have been "in the city of David," which is commonly understood exclusively of Mount Zion. But it will be observed that there are no sepulchres in Mount Zion, and that those which we have been describing, although now at a considerable distance from the northern wall of the town, appear to have been comprehended within the ancient wall; as it is on all hands agreed that the city extended in this direction-the only direction in which it could extend-far beyond its present limits. And if it was within the wall, it must have been the sepulchre of the kings, because it is in Scripture mentioned as a distinction of royalty to be buried within the city. The Jewish writers concur, informing us that sepulchres were to be at some distance beyond the walls of a town; and that in Jerusalem no sepulchres were allowed, except those of the house of David, and that of Huldah the prophetess (Lightfoot's Chor. Cent.' ch. xxi). Here it will be observed that no mention is made of the city of David "as distinguished from Jerusalem: and so also, Josephus, in mentioning these sepulchres, says they were in Jerusalem," without distinguishing the city of David. The common restriction which limits the term "city of David" to Mount Zion, and which occasions so much perplexity in the present and other cases, does not seem to be required by Scripture. It certainly bears that restriction in some instances; but we have no right therefore to infer that it does so in all, since the same designation has often in Scripture a large and a restricted meaning. In the New Testament, Bethlehem is called "the city of David," because he was born there; and that Jerusalem was sometimes in the large sense distinguished by a reference to David, we see by Isa. xxix. 1, where the prophet, after mentioning it under the name of Ariel," precludes misapprehension by adding, "the city where David dwelt." Upon the whole, we consider that whatever difficulties may attend the question, it is far less difficult to admit that these excavations were the sepulchres of the kings than to assign them any other destination.

As it may be objected to this conclusion, that the style and taste of the architecture exhibited at the entrance to