ericho, and this even when he quote Josephus. I suspect
the transcriber of the Hebrew chronicle mistook the name, and wrote
Jordan for Jericho.

[7] The reading of one of Josephus's Greek MSS. seems here to be right,
that Aristobulus was "not eighteen years old" when he was drowned, for
he was not seventeen when he was made high priest, ch. 2. sect. 6, ch.
3. sect. 3, and he continued in that office but one year, as in the
place before us.

[8] The reader is here to take notice, that this seventh year of the
reign of Herod, and all the other years of his reign, in Josephus, are
dated from the death of Antigonus, or at the soonest from the conclusion
of Antigonus, and the taking of Jerusalem a few months before, and never
from his first obtaining the kingdom at Rome, above three years before,
as some have very weakly and injudiciously done.

[9] Herod says here, that as ambassadors were sacred when they carried
messages to others, so did the laws of the Jews derive a sacred
authority by being delivered from God by angels, [or Divine
ambassadors,] which is St. Paul's expression about the same laws,
Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2;2.

[10] This piece of religion, the supplicating God with sacrifices, by
Herod, before he went to this fight with the Arabians, taken notice of
also in the first book of the War, ch. 19. sect. 5, is worth remarking,
because it is the only example of this nature, so far as I remember,
that Josephus ever mentions in all his large and particular accounts
of this Herod; and it was when he had been in mighty distress, and
discouraged by a great defeat of his former army, and by a very great
earthquake in Judea, such times of affliction making men most religious;
nor was he disappointed of his hopes here, but immediately gained a most
signal victory over the Arabians, while they who just before had been so
great victors, and so much elevated upon the earthquake in Judea as
to venture to slay the Jewish ambassadors, were now under a strange
consternation, and hardly able to fight at all.

[11] Whereas Mariamne is here represented as reproaching: Herod with the
murder of her father [Alexander], as well as her brother [Aristobulus],
while it was her grandfather Hyrcanus, and not her father Alexander,
whom he caused to be slain, [as Josephus himself informs us, ch.
6. sect. 2,] we must either take Zonaras's reading, which is here
grandfather, rightly, or else we must, as before, ch. 1. sect. 1, allow
a sl