ble supporter,
instead of his own army. Was not our queen sent back, without any
defilement, to her husband, the very next evening?--while the king of
Egypt fled away, adoring this place which you have defiled by shedding
thereon the blood of your own countrymen; and he also trembled at those
visions which he saw in the night season, and bestowed both silver and
gold on the Hebrews, as on a people beloved by God. Shall I say nothing,
or shall I mention the removal of our fathers into Egypt, who, [17] when
they were used tyrannically, and were fallen under the power of foreign
kings for four hundred ears together, and might have defended themselves
by war and by fighting, did yet do nothing but commit themselves to God!
Who is there that does not know that Egypt was overrun with all sorts of
wild beasts, and consumed by all sorts of distempers? how their land
did not bring forth its fruit? how the Nile failed of water? how the ten
plagues of Egypt followed one upon another? and how by those means our
fathers were sent away under a guard, without any bloodshed, and
without running any dangers, because God conducted them as his peculiar
servants? Moreover, did not Palestine groan under the ravage the
Assyrians made, when they carried away our sacred ark? as did their idol
Dagon, and as also did that entire nation of those that carried it away,
how they were smitten with a loathsome distemper in the secret parts of
their bodies, when their very bowels came down together with what they
had eaten, till those hands that stole it away were obliged to bring it
back again, and that with the sound of cymbals and timbrels, and other
oblations, in order to appease the anger of God for their violation of
his holy ark. It was God who then became our General, and accomplished
these great things for our fathers, and this because they did not meddle
with war and fighting, but committed it to him to judge about their
affairs. When Sennacherib, king of Assyria, brought along with him all
Asia, and encompassed this city round with his army, did he fall by the
hands of men? were not those hands lifted up to God in prayers, without
meddling with their arms, when an angel of God destroyed that prodigious
army in one night? when the Assyrian king, as he rose the next day,
found a hundred fourscore and five thousand dead bodies, and when he,
with the remainder of his army, fled away from the Hebrews, though they
were unarmed, and did not pursue th