he part of the prophets and their followers. We are told that Manasseh
"shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one
end to another;" there is even a Kabbinic tradition to the effect that,
weary of the admonitions of the aged Isaiah, he put him to death by
shutting him up in the hollow trunk of a tree, and causing him to be
sawn in two.*

* 2 Kings xxi. 16. The tradition in regard to the fate of
Isaiah took its foundation in this text, and it is perhaps
indirectly referred to in Heb. xi. 37.

For a long time after this no instance can be found of a prophet
administering public affairs or directing the actions of the king
himself; the priests and reformers, finding no outlet for their
energy in this direction, fell back on private preaching and literary
propaganda. And, above all, they applied themselves to the task of
rewriting the history of Israel, which, as told by the chroniclers of
the previous century, presented the national Deity in too material a
light, and one which failed to harmonise with the ideals then obtaining.
So long as there were two separate Hebrew kingdoms, the existence of the
two parallel versions of the Elohist and Jahvist gave rise to but little
difficulty: each version had its own supporters and readers, whose
consciences were readily satisfied by the interpolation of a few new
facts into the text as occasion arose. But now that Samaria had fallen,
and the whole political and religious life of the Hebrew race
was centred in Judah alone, the necessity for a double and often
contradictory narrative had ceased to exist, and the idea occurred of
combining the two in a single work. This task, which was begun in
the reign of Hezekiah and continued under Manasseh, resulted in the
production of a literature of which fragments have been incorporated
into the historical books of our Bible.*

The reign of Amon witnessed no alteration in the policy initiated by his
predecessor Manasseh; but when, after less than two years' rule, he was
suddenly struck down by the knife of an assassin, the party of reform
carried the day, and the views of Hezekiah and Isaiah regained their
ascendency. Josiah had been king, in name at any rate, for twelve
years,** and was learning to act on his own responsibility, when the
Scythian danger appeared on the horizon.

* The scheme of the present work prevents me from doing more
than allude in passing to these preliminary stages