d or five hundred miles to affist the Jews! The feat of the war lies too diftant for the king of Ethiopia to be fo fuddenly engaged in it. Some neighbouring prince, whose country bordered upon the nations attacked by Sennacherib, might think it advisable to raise an army on his back to check his conquefts, left himself in time fhould fuffer from him: and fuch a neighbouring prince was this king of Cush, a king of Arabia, whofe country lay near to Ezion-Geber, and not far from the borders of Judea. The learned Dr. Prideaux & makes Tirhakah an Ethiopian, kinfman to the king of Egypt; and, to make it probable that the Ethiopian might be concerned in the war, he imagines Tirhakah's army to march against Sennacherib, when he was befieging Pelufium, a city of Egypt. But this feems contrary to the hiftory. Sennacherib had been warring againft Lachith, and was at Libnah when the rumour of Tirhakah's expedition reached him. Sennacherib's war with Egypt was over before this, and he had done to Egypt all that his heart could defire; had overrun the country, carried away captive all the inhabitants of No-Amon, a great and ftrong city of Egypt, according to what the prophet Isaiah had foretold, and the prophet Nahum obferved to the Ninevites %. That Sennacherib's conqueft of Egypt was over before he came to Lachish and Libnah, is evident, if we confider that after this he undertook no expedition. Upon hearing the rumour of Tirhakah, he decamped; and foon after God fent the blast upon him, and destroyed his army; and then he was obliged to return home to his own land, and was there, fome time after, murdered. And agreeably hereto, Rabfbakeh reprefents the king of Egypt but as a bruifed reed; but a reed in his greatest strength, easy to be broken by the king of Affyria; and a bruised reed, already brought into a very diftreffed condition, by the victories his master had obtained over him. Jofephus mentions this Tirhakah by the name of Tharfices, and fupposes him to affift Egypt, and not the d Con. vol. i. book i. an. 706. e See 2 Kings xix. f Ifaiah xx. 4. Nahum iii. 8. H 3 h 2 Kings xix. 7. i 2 Kings xviii. 21. k Jofeph. Antiq. 1. x. c. 1. Jews, Jews, and to march his army when Sennacherib was engaged at Pelufium: but this is one inftance where Jofephus did not copy carefully from the facred pages. He was misled in this particular by Herodotus, whom he quotes in his relation of this story: however the description which Jofephus gives of Tirhakah's march through the desert of Arabia, into the territories of the king of Affyria, fhews evidently that he was a king of Arabia, and not of Ethiopia. The king of Cush, therefore, was a king of Arabia. I may add further, that Egypt is described to lie beyond the rivers of Cush1; now if Cush fignifies Ethiopia, Ethiopia might poffibly be faid to lie beyond the rivers of Egypt, but Egypt cannot poffibly be described to lie beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: but Cush here fignifies Arabia; and the rivers of Arabia, beyond which Egypt is faid to lie, are that which runs into the Lake Sirbonis, commonly called the river of Egypt, and the river Sihor, mentioned Jofh. xiii. 3. Again", we are told that Miriam and Aaron Spake against Mofes, because of the Cufbite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Cufbite woman. We must not here render Cufhite, Ethiopian, as our English translators do; for Mofes never married one of that country; rather the Cufhite woman was Zipporah the Arabian, the daughter of Jethro the priest of Midian". I might bring feveral other paffages of Scripture to prove the land of Cufh to be fome or other of the parts of Arabia, where the defcendants of Cufh fettled. In the later writings of the Scriptures, the name of Cush is given only to the parts remote and diftant from Babylon; the reafon whereof was probably this: when the Babylonian empire came to flourish, the parts near to Babylon acquired new names, and loft their old ones in the great turns and revolutions of the empire; but the changes of names and places near Babylon, not affecting the countries that lay at a dif tance, the Prophets in after ages might properly enough give these the name of Cush, long after the places, near to which Cufh firft fettled, had loft all name and remembrance of him. 1 Ifaiah xviii. t. m Numb. xii. I. Exod. ii. 21. The The fons of Cuth were Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raama, Sabtecha, Sheba, Dedan, and Nimrod. Nimrod reigned king at Babel, and built round him feveral cities, Erac, Achad, and Calne o. Havilah lived within the branch of the river Pifon, which ran out of the Euphrates into the bay of Perfia; for the country of the Ishmaelites, which extended itself from Egypt in a direct line towards Babylonia, or Shinaar, is described to lie from Shur, which is before Egypt, to Havilah P. Seba, Sabta, Raamah, Sabtecha, and their defcendants and affociates, peopled Arabia Felix. There are but flender proofs of the particular places where Seba, Sabta, and Sabtecha first fettled. Pliny fays, the Sabeans, inhabitants of Arabia, famous for their fpicery, are a number of nations. which reach from fea to fea, i. e. from the Perfian Gulf to the Red Sea. It is probable they entered the country near Havilah and Shinaar, and their first little companies took different paths in it; and whilft they were infant nations, they might live diftinct and feparate from one another; time and increase made them fufficient to fill and replenish it, and for to mingle with and unite to one another. Raama and his two fons, Sheba and Dedan, peopled the parts adjacent to the Red Sea. Sheba lived on the borders. of the land of Midian; and hence it happened, that in afterages a queen of this country, hearing of the renown of King Solomon, probably from his famous fhipping at Ezion-Geber, on the borders of her kingdom, went to vifit him 9. Raama was near to Sheba, for they are mentioned as joint traders to Tyre in fpicery, the noted product of thofe countries. Dedan fixed on the borders of the land of Edom; for Ezekiel, prophefying of the land of Edom, and the parts adjacent, joins Dedan to it. Mizraim was fecond fon of Ham. His defcendants were Ludim, Ananim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrufim, Cafluhim, Philiftim, Caphtorim. • Gen. x. 10. › Chap. xxv. 18. 1 1 Kings x. r Ezek. xxvii. 22. Mizraim became king of Egypt, which after his death was divided into three kingdoms, by three of his fons. His fons, names that fettled here were Ananim, who was king of Tanis, or Lower Egypt, called afterwards Delta; Naphtuhim, who was king of Naph, Memphis, or Upper Egypt; and Pathrufim, who fet up the kingdom of Pathros, or Thebes, in Thebais. t Ludim and Lehabim peopled Libya. The prophet Eze. kiel fpeaking of the Libyans, whom he calls by their original name Lud, calls them a mingled people; perhaps hinting their rise from two originals: Libya seems rather derived from Lehabim than Ludim, but we rarely find them called otherwise than Lud; they are, I think, once named from Lehabim, 2 Chron. xii. 3. people came out of Egypt, the Lubims. Cafluhim, another fon of Mizraim, fixed himself at Cashiotis, in the entrance of Egypt from Palestine. He had two fons, Philiftim and Caphtorim. Caphtorim fucceeded him at Cafhiotis. Philiftim planted the country of the Philistins, between the borders of Canaan and the Mediterranean Sea. Cafhiotis was called Caphtor, from Caphtorim, the second prince of it and the Philiftins are faid to have been of Caph tor", because the place of their parent Cafluhim was fo called. Phut was the third fon of Ham. He was, I believe, planted fomewhere in Arabia, near to Cufh, not far from Shinaar, probably in the land of Havilah; for the prophet Ezekiel, as the northern enemies of the Jews were put together, fo alfo joins thofe that were to come from Babylon *, and makes them to be Perfia, Cufh, and Phut. Some writers have imagined Phut to have planted Mauritania; but how then could he be neighbour to Cush or Perfia? The prophet Jeremiah, speaking of fome nations that should over run Egypt, calls them Cufh, Lud, and Phut. Now the nations which fulfilled this prophecy were, 1. Nebuchadnezzar with his army of Cufhites and defcendants of Phut, who were both then fub t Chap. xxx. 5. Amos ix. 7. x Ezek. xxxviii. 5. y Jerem. xlvi. 9. ject |