that coast could bring him former three thousand years of the world,
till the days of Job nearer to Nineveh than could any coast of the
Mediterranian and Moses.

[21] This account of an earthquake at Jerusalem at the very same time
when Uzziah usurped the priest's office, and went into the sanctuary
to burn incense, and of the consequences of the earthquake, is entirely
wanting in our other copies, though it be exceeding like to a prophecy
of Jeremiah, now in Zechariah 14:4, 5; in which prophecy mention is made
of "fleeing from that earthquake, as they fled from this earthquake in
the days of Uzziah king of Judah;" so that there seems to have been
some considerable resemblance between these historical and prophetical
earthquakes.

[22] Dr. Wall, in his critical notes on 2 Kings 15:20, observes, "that
when this Menahem is said to have exacted the money of Israel of all the
mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give Pul,
the king of Assyria, a thousand talents, this is the first public money
raised by any [Israelite] king by tax on the people; that they used
before to raise it out of the treasures of the house of the Lord, or
of their own house; that it was a poll-money on the rich men, [and them
only,] to raise oe353,000, or, as others count a talent, oe400,000, at
the rate of oe6 or oe7 per head; and that God commanded, by Ezekiel,
ch. 45:8; 46:18, that no such thing should be done [at the Jews'
restoration], but the king should have land of his own."

[23] This passage is taken out of the prophet Nahum, ch. 2:8-13, and is
the principal, or rather the only, one that is given us almost verbatim,
but a little abridged, in all Josephus's known writings: by which
quotation we learn what he himself always asserts, viz. that he made use
of the Hebrew original and not of the Greek version]; as also we learn,
that his Hebrew copy considerably differed from ours. See all three
texts particularly set down and compared together in the Essay on the
Old Testament, page 187.

[24] This siege of Samaria, though not given a particular account of,
either in our Hebrew or Greek Bibles, or in Josephus, was so very
long, no less than three years, that it was no way improbable but that
parents, and particularly mothers, might therein be reduced to eat
their own children, as the law of Moses had threatened upon their
disobedience, Leviticus 26;29; Deuteronomy 28:53-57; and as was
accomplished in the other shorte