provided they would trust in him only, sent
secretly to the Egyptians and Ethiopians for succour. Their armies, being
united, marched to the relief of Jerusalem at the time appointed, and were
met and vanquished by the Assyrian in a pitched battle. He pursued them
into Egypt and entirely laid waste the country. At his return from thence,
the very night before he was to have given a general assault to Jerusalem,
which then seemed lost to all hopes, the destroying angel made dreadful
havoc in the camp of the Assyrians; destroyed a hundred fourscore and five
thousand men by fire and sword; and proved evidently, that they had great
reason to rely, as Hezekiah had done, on the promise of the God of Israel.

This is the real fact. But as it was no ways honourable to the Egyptians,
they endeavoured to turn it to their own advantage, by disguising and
corrupting the circumstances of it. Nevertheless, the footsteps of this
history, though so much defaced, ought yet to be highly valued, as coming
from an historian of so great antiquity and authority as Herodotus.

The prophet Isaiah had foretold, at several times, that this expedition of
the Egyptians, which had been concerted, seemingly, with such prudence,
conducted with the greatest skill, and in which the forces of two powerful
empires were united, in order to relieve the Jews, would not only be of no
service to Jerusalem, but even destructive to Egypt itself, whose
strongest cities would be taken, its territories plundered, and its
inhabitants of all ages and sexes led into captivity. See the 18th, 19th,
20th, 30th, 31st, &c. chapters of his prophecy.

Archbishop Usher and Dean Prideaux suppose that it was at this period that
the ruin of the famous city No-Amon,(446) spoken of by the prophet Nahum,
happened. That prophet says,(447) that "she was carried away--that her
young children were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets--that
the enemy cast lots for her honourable men, and that all her great men
were bound in chains." He observes, that all these misfortunes befell that
city, when Egypt and Ethiopia were her strength; which seems to refer
clearly enough to the time of which we are here speaking, when Tharaca and
Sethon had united their forces. However, this opinion is not without some
difficulties, and is contradicted by some learned men. It is sufficient
for me to have hinted it to the reader.

Till the reign of Sethon, the Egyptian priests computed three hun