ipalities of this
world which were drawn round in Pharaoh's orbit; Egypt had shown herself
incapable of safeguarding her friends, and things had gone steadily from
bad to worse so long as these latter held the reins of government;
their removal from office had been, as it were, the signal for a welcome
change in the fortunes of the Jews. Jahveh had delivered His city
the moment when, ceasing to rely upon itself, it had surrendered its
guidance into His hands, and the means of avoiding disaster in the
future was clearly pointed out to it. Judah must be content to follow
the counsels which Isaiah had urged upon it in the name of the Most
High, and submissively obey the voice of its prophets. "Thine eyes shall
see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying,
This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when
ye turn to the left. And ye shall defile the over-laying of thy graven
images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold: thou
shalt cast them away as an unclean thing; thou shalt say unto it, Get
thee hence." Isaiah seems to disappear after his triumph, and none of
his later prophecies have come down to us: yet the influence of his
teaching lasted throughout the reign of Hezekiah, and the court,
supported by the more religious section of the people, not only abjured
the worship of false gods, but forsook the high places and discontinued
the practices which he had so strenuously denounced. The great bulk of
the nation, however, soon returned to their idolatrous practices, if,
indeed, they had ever given them up, and many of the royal advisers grew
weary of the rigid observances which it was sought to impose upon them;
rites abhorrent to Jahveh found favour even among members of the king's
own family, and on Hezekiah's death, about 686 B.C., a reaction promptly
set in against both his religious views and the material reforms he had
introduced.*

* 2 Kings xxi. 2-7 (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 2-7), where, in
spite of manifest recensions of the text, the facts
themselves seem to have been correctly set forth.

Manasseh was only thirteen years old when he came to the throne, and his
youth naturally inclined him towards the less austere forms of divine
worship: from the very first he tolerated much that his father had
forbidden, and the spirit of eclecticism which prevailed among his
associates rendered him, later on, an object of special detestation to
th