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JEWISH HISTORY AND POLITICS

En the Times of Sargon and Sennacherib.

JEWISH HISTORY AND

POLITICS

IN THE TIMES OF SARGON AND

SENNACHERIB

An Enquiry

INTO THE HISTORICAL MEANING AND PURPOSE OF THE PROPHECIES
OF ISAIAH

BY SIR EDWARD STRACHEY, BART.

SECOND Edition, revised, witH ADDITIONS

W. ISBISTER & CO.

56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON

Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those
The top of eloquence; statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our Prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government

In their majestic, unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our Law best form a king.

Paradise Regained, iv. 353.

34987

CBNJ •St8

PREFACE.

It is now many years ago that, by the advice of my friend Mr. MAURICE, I proposed to myself to make the science of Politics my study. In order to give Jewish History and Politics their proper place in that study I chose the period of which this Volume treats; and the reader is here offered the results of my inquiry.

has been revised throughout, and have been made to it.

The present edition considerable additions

This period-the last half of the eighth century B.C.is of characteristic importance in the history of the Jewish nation, which had now reached its highest point of civilization, and was come into contact with the Assyrian Power, which was overwhelming the Eastern world. Its social and religious condition, and its politics, home and foreign, are known to us through the contemporary discourses of the Prophets, the political and religious advisers of the kings and people. A new and interesting light is thrown upon it by the Assyrian Inscriptions, which show us, as facts, many events and circumstances of which, without them, we could only infer the existence. And the genius of Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets of that or any time, has called out a series of learned and thoughtful commentaries on his writings, such as are hardly available for the student of any other book.

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