m such idolatry and rebellion; nor is there any reason to
doubt of the truth of the prodigious number upmost: signal an occasion.

[30] The reader is to remember that Cush is not Ethiopia, but Arabia.
See Bochart, B. IV. ch. 2.

[31] Here is a very great error in our Hebrew copy in this place, 2
Chronicles 15:3-6, as applying what follows to times past, and not to
times future; whence that text is quite misapplied by Sir Isaac Newton.

[32] This Abelmain, or, in Josephus's copy, Abellane, that belonged
to the land of Israel, and bordered on the country of Damascus, is
supposed, both by Hudson and Spanheim, to be the same with Abel, or
Ahila, whence came Abilene. This may be that city so denominated from
Abel the righteous, there buried, concerning the shedding of whose blood
within the compass of the land of Israel, I understand our Savior's
words about the fatal war and overthrow of Judea by Titus and his Roman
army; "That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the
land, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias son of
Barnchins, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily, I say
unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation," Matthew
23;35, 36; Luke 11:51.

[33] Josephus, in his present copies, says, that a little while rain
upon the earth; whereas, in our other copies, it is after many days,
1 Kings 18:1. Several years are also intimated there, and in Josephus,
sect. 2, as belonging to this drought and famine; nay, we have the
express mention of the third year, which I suppose was reckoned from the
recovery of the widow's son, and the ceasing of this drought in Phmuiela
[which, as Menander informs us here, lasted one whole year]; and both
our Savior and St. James affirm, that this drought lasted in all three
years and six months, as their copies of the Old Testament then informed
them, Luke 4:25; James 5:17. Josephus here seems to mean, that this
drought affected all the habitable earth, and presently all the earth,
as our Savior says it was upon all the earth, Luke 4:25. They who
restrain these expressions to the land of Judea alone, go without
sufficient authority or examples.

[34] Mr. Spanheim takes notice here, that in the worship of Mithra [the
god of the Persians] the priests cut themselves in the same manner
as did these priests in their invocation of Baal [the god of the
Phoenicians].

[35] For Izar we may here read [with Hudson and Cocceius] Isachar