4) sixty(1045) cubits
high, assembled all the great men of the kingdom to celebrate the
dedication of it, and commanded all his subjects to worship it,
threatening to cast those that should refuse into the midst of a burning
fiery furnace. Upon this occasion it was that the three young Hebrews,
Ananias, Misael, and Azarias, who with an invincible courage refused to
comply with the king's impious ordinance, were preserved after a
miraculous manner in the midst of the flames. The king, himself a witness
of this astonishing miracle, published an edict, whereby all persons
whatsoever were forbidden, upon pain of death, to speak any thing amiss
against the God of Ananias, Misael, and Azarias. He likewise promoted
these three young men to the highest honours and employments.

Nabuchodonosor, in the twenty-first year of his reign, and the fourth
after the destruction of Jerusalem, marched again into Syria, and besieged
Tyre, at the time when Ithobal was king thereof. Tyre was a strong and
opulent city, which had never been subject to any foreign power, and was
then in great repute for its commerce: by which many of its citizens were
become like so many princes in wealth and magnificence.(1046) It had been
built by the Sidonians two hundred and forty years before the temple of
Jerusalem. For Sidon being taken by the Philistines of Ascalon, many of
its inhabitants made their escape in ships, and founded the city of Tyre.
And for this reason we find it called in Isaiah "the daughter of
Sidon."(1047) But the daughter soon surpassed the mother in grandeur,
riches, and power. Accordingly, at the time we are speaking of, she was in
a condition to resist, thirteen years together, a monarch, to whose yoke
all the rest of the East had submitted.

It was not till after so long an interval, that Nabuchodonosor made
himself master of Tyre.(1048) His troops suffered incredible hardships
before it; so that, according to the prophet's expression, "every head was
made bald, and every shoulder was peeled."(1049) Before the city was
reduced to the last extremity, its inhabitants retired, with the greatest
part of their effects, into a neighbouring isle, half a mile from the
shore, where they built a new city; the name and glory whereof
extinguished the remembrance of the old one, which from thenceforward
became a mere village, retaining the name of ancient Tyre.

Nabuchodonosor and his army having undergone the utmost fatigues during so
long a