Notes, Critical and Explanatory, on the Holy Scriptures

The whole kingdom of Juda may be meant, since it was a remnant of the entire nation, after the ten tribes had been carried into captivity : but the phrase seems to mark a state of distress.

A deposition, inclination, will. Ges. shows that this is the meaning. God prepared and disposed Sennacherib to believe the report and act on it : yet not so as to impart false impressions, or to determine his will. P. "A blast." Al. M Behold, I am putting a spirit in him." L. M An (other) spirit."

God, iu token of their deliverance from Sennacherib, tells them to eat of the spontaneous produoe of the earth, the first year, and of the fruits of the trees the seoond year, but to attend to tilling and ▼inedresaing in the third, promising them that they shall eat of the fruits of their labors. This promise, with the providential provision during the two first years, serves as a token of their being rescued from his attack. It appears that Sennacherib was absent during the greater part of the time.

St. Jerome refers to Herodotus and Berosms, as testifying the defeat and overthrow of Sennacherib. Herodotus, on the authority of the priests of 8ethos, a priest king of Lower Egypt, states that when Sen- nacherib invaded it, a prodigious number of rats, by the miraculous interposition of the god Pth ah, entered the Assyrian camp by night, and gnawed the quivers, bows, and shields, so that iu the morning the invaders, being without arms, fled in confbskra. This statement indirectly supports the fact of the miraculous overthrow of Sennacherib, which was the occasion of the fable.