the
villages, to secure them from those insults. And in this state were the
affairs of Judea at that time.

WAR BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES

[1] Hear Dean Aldrich's note on this place: "The law or Custom of the
Jews [says he] requires seven days' mourning for the dead," Antiq. B.
XVII. ch. 8. sect. 4; whence the author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus,
ch. 22:12, assigns seven days as the proper time of mourning for the
dead, and, ch. 38:17, enjoins men to mourn for the dead, that they may
not be evil spoken of; for, as Josephus says presently, if any one omits
this mourning [funeral feast], he is not esteemed a holy person. How
it is certain that such a seven days' mourning has been customary from
times of the greatest antiquity, Genesis 1:10. Funeral feasts are also
mentioned as of considerable antiquity, Ezekiel 24:17; Jeremiah 16:7;
Prey. 31:6; Deuteronomy 26:14; Josephus, Of the War B. III. ch. 9. sect.
5.

[2] This holding a council in the temple of Apollo, in the emperor's
palace at Rome, by Augustus, and even the building of this temple
magnificently by himself in that palace, are exactly agreeable to
Augustus, in his elder years, as Aldrich and from Suttonius and
Propertius.

[3] Here we have a strong confirmation that it was Xerxes, and not
Artaxerxes, under whom the main part of the Jews returned out of the
Babylonian captivity, i.e. in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The same
thing is in the Antiquities, B. XI. ch.6

[4] This practice of the Essens, in refusing to swear, and esteeming
swearing in ordinary occasions worse than perjury, is delivered here in
general words, as are the parallel injunctions of our Savior, Matthew
6:34; 23:16; and of St. James, 5:12; but all admit of particular
exceptions for solemn causes, and on great and necessary occasions. Thus
these very Essens, who here do so zealously avoid swearing, are related,
in the very next section, to admit none till they take tremendous oaths
to perform their several duties to God, and to their neighbor, without
supposing they thereby break this rule, Not to swear at all. The case
is the same in Christianity, as we learn from the Apostolical
Constitutions, which although they agree with Christ and St. James, in
forbidding to swear in general, ch. 5:12; 6:2, 3; yet do they explain it
elsewhere, by avoiding to swear falsely, and to swear often and in vain,
ch. 2:36; and again, by "not swearing at all," but withal adding, that
"if that cannot be avoided, to s