Antiquities — Book 10

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1. The campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib against Jerusalem, and his siege of Hezekiah, their king. 2. How the Assyrian army was destroyed by plague in a single night, and their king, after withdrawing home, was killed in a plot by his own sons. 3. How Hezekiah lived out the rest of his life in peace and died, leaving Manasseh as his successor to the kingdom. 4. That the kings of the Chaldeans and Babylonians campaigned against him, defeated him, took him captive, and led him to Babylon, and after holding him there a long time released him again to the same kingdom. 5. How, when the Egyptian king Necho campaigned against the Babylonians and made his way through Judea, King Josiah went out to stop him; a battle took place, and Josiah, carried wounded to Jerusalem, died, and the people of Jerusalem made his son Jehoahaz king. 6. How Necho, after engaging the king of the Babylonians at the Euphrates river and turning back toward Egypt, came to Jerusalem, took Jehoahaz away to Egypt, and made his brother Jehoiakim king of the Jerusalemites. 7. The campaign of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, into Syria, and how, after subduing all of it as far as the borders of Egypt, he went up to Jerusalem and forced their king Jehoiakim to become his friend and ally. 8. How, after the Babylonian's withdrawal, Jehoiakim again inclined toward the Egyptians, and Nebuchadnezzar campaigned against him and besieged the city; when it surrendered after a time, he killed Jehoiakim and set up his son Jehoiachin as king. 9. That Nebuchadnezzar, regretting having made Jehoiachin king, campaigned against Jerusalem and gained control of Jehoiachin, who surrendered himself along with his mother and his friends; how the Babylonian took many captives, carried off the temple treasures, and returned to Babylon, setting up Jehoiachin's uncle Zedekiah as king of the people of Jerusalem. 10. How, hearing that this man too wished to make an alliance and friendship with the Egyptians, he campaigned against Jerusalem, took it by force in the siege, burned the temple, deported the people of Jerusalem, and removed Zedekiah to Babylon. 11. How Nebuchadnezzar, on dying, left his son as successor to the kingdom, and how their rule was ended by Cyrus, king of the Persians. 12. What happened to the Jews at this time among the Babylonians. This book covers a period of 182 years, 6 months, and 10 days.

Hezekiah, king of the two tribes, was already in the fourteenth year of his reign when the king of the Assyrians, called Sennacherib, campaigned against him with great preparation, and took by force all the cities of the tribe of Judah and of Benjamin. When he was about to lead his forces against Jerusalem as well, Hezekiah forestalled him by sending envoys, promising to obey him and to pay whatever tribute he might set. Learning this from the envoys, Sennacherib decided not to make war, but accepted the request; on receiving three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, he agreed to withdraw as a friend, giving the envoys sworn pledges that, having suffered no wrong, he would return on these terms. Hezekiah, persuaded, emptied his treasuries and sent the money, thinking he would be freed from the war and from the struggle over his kingdom. But the Assyrian, once he had received it, paid no regard whatever to what he had promised; instead he himself campaigned against the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, but left his general Rhapsakes, together with two other officials of rank, with a large force, to ravage Jerusalem. Their names were Tharatha and Aracharis. When they arrived and encamped before the walls, they sent to Hezekiah demanding that he come out to a parley.

He himself, out of fear, did not go out, but sent three of his closest friends: Eliakim, the steward of the kingdom, Shebna, and Joah, the recorder. These went forward and stood opposite the commanders of the Assyrian army. When the general Rhapsakes saw them, he ordered them to go back and tell Hezekiah that the great king Sennacherib wanted to know in what he trusted and relied, that he fled from his master, refused to listen, and would not receive his army into the city; or whether, hoping in the Egyptians, he expected his own army to prevail through them. If that is what he expects, let him be told that he is a fool, like a man who leans on a broken reed, which not only falls but pierces his hand as it falls, so that he feels the injury. Let him know, too, that it is by the will of God that he has made this campaign against him — the God who gave him the kingdom of the Israelites to overthrow as well, so that in the same way he might destroy those under his rule.

Rhapsakes said this in Hebrew — for he was skilled in that tongue — and Eliakim, fearing that the crowd, on hearing it, would fall into confusion, asked him to speak in Aramaic. But the general, understanding his suspicion and the fear behind it, answered in a louder and more piercing voice, speaking in Hebrew all the same, so that on hearing the king's commands all might choose what was to their advantage and surrender themselves to us: "It is clear that you and the king are deceiving the people with empty hopes and persuading them to resist. If you are confident and think you can drive back our forces, I am ready to provide you two thousand horses from those I have here; give them riders in equal number and so display your own strength — though you could not even furnish as many as that, since you do not have them. Why then do you delay handing yourselves over to those who are stronger, and who will take you whether you wish it or not? Yet voluntary surrender is safe for you, while resistance, if you go on fighting against your will, will prove dangerous and the cause of disasters."

Hearing this, the people and the envoys reported to Hezekiah what the Assyrian general had said. In response he took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and assumed a posture of humility; and following ancestral custom, falling on his face, he implored God and begged him to help one who had no other hope of safety. He also sent some of his friends and some of the priests to the prophet Isaiah, asking him to entreat God, and, after offering sacrifices for the common safety, to call on him to be indignant at the enemy's hopes and to have mercy on his people. The prophet did this, and when God had given him an oracle, he encouraged the king himself and the friends around him, foretelling that the enemy would be defeated without a battle and would withdraw in disgrace, not with the boldness they now displayed; for God was providing for their destruction. He also foretold that Sennacherib himself, king of the Assyrians, would fail in his design against Egypt, and that on returning home he would perish by the sword.

It happened that at this same time the Assyrian had also written letters to Hezekiah, in which he called him foolish for supposing that he would escape the servitude he imposed, when he had subdued many great and powerful nations, and he threatened to destroy him utterly if he did not willingly open his gates and receive his army into Jerusalem. On reading this, Hezekiah despised it because of his trust in God, and folding up the letters, he laid them up inside the temple. And when he had again offered his prayers to God concerning the city and the safety of all, the prophet Isaiah declared that he had been heard, and that for the present the city would not be besieged by the Syrian; that the people would farm in peace, unafraid of anything he had done, and tend their own property without any fear.

A little time later, the king of the Assyrians, having failed in his design against the Egyptians, withdrew home without success, for the following reason. He had spent much time on the siege of Pelusium, and when the mounds he had raised against the walls were already high and he was on the point of assaulting them, he heard that the king of the Ethiopians, Tharsikes, was coming with a large force to aid the Egyptians, having resolved to march through the desert and fall suddenly upon the Assyrians. Thrown into confusion by this news, King Sennacherib is said to have campaigned against the priest of Hephaestus — since this king had gone against the king of the Egyptians, who was a priest of Hephaestus — and while besieging Pelusium he broke off the siege for the following reason: the king of the Egyptians prayed to his god, who, hearing him, sent a plague upon the Arab. Here too Herodotus errs, calling the king not of the Assyrians but of the Arabians; for he says that a multitude of mice gnawed through the bows and the rest of the weapons of the Assyrians in a single night, and that for this reason, having no bows, the king withdrew his army from Pelusium. This is Herodotus's account.

But Berosus, who wrote the history of the Chaldeans, also mentions King Sennacherib, both that he ruled the Assyrians and that he campaigned against all Asia and Egypt, speaking as follows: "When Sennacherib returned from the wars against the Egyptians to Jerusalem, he found there the force under his general Rhapsakes, upon which God had sent a plague; on the very first night of the siege 185,000 men perished, together with their commanders and officers. Thrown into fear and terrible anguish by this disaster, and fearing for the whole of his remaining army, he fled with the rest of his forces to his own kingdom, called Nineveh. After spending a short time there, he was treacherously murdered by his elder sons Adramelech and Sharezer, and died, and was laid to rest in his own temple, called Araske. Those who fled after the murder of their father, because of the citizens, went off to Armenia, and Esarhaddon, who held Sennacherib in contempt, succeeded to the kingdom after them." Such, then, was the end that befell the Assyrian campaign against the people of Jerusalem.

King Hezekiah, unexpectedly freed from his fears, offered thanksgiving sacrifices to God together with all the people, since it was by no other cause that the enemy had perished — some destroyed outright, others driven away from Jerusalem by fear of a like death — than by the alliance of God. Yet though he showed every zeal and devotion toward God, not long after he fell into a grave illness, and was given up by the physicians, who expected nothing good for him, nor did his friends. To his illness was added a terrible despondency, since the king reckoned that he was childless, and that he would die leaving his house and his rule without a legitimate successor. Suffering above all from this thought, and lamenting, he implored God to grant him a little further span of life, until he should father children, and not to let his soul depart before he became a father.

God took pity on him and accepted his request, since it was not because he was about to be deprived of the good things of his kingdom that he lamented his supposed death, nor because he had begged for more time to live for its own sake, but because he wanted children to succeed to his rule; and he sent the prophet Isaiah to tell him that he would recover from his illness after the third day and would live fifteen years beyond it, and that children would be born to him. When the prophet, by God's command, announced this, Hezekiah, because of the severity of his illness and the strangeness of what was reported, did not believe it, and asked Isaiah for some sign, some marvel, so that he might believe he spoke these things as one come from God; for what is beyond reckoning and greater than hope is confirmed to men by like extraordinary events. When Isaiah asked him what sign he wished to have happen, he asked that the sun, since it had already made the shadow decline ten steps in the house, be made to turn back to the same place again. When the prophet called on God to display this sign to the king, Hezekiah saw what he wanted, and at once, freed from his illness, went up to the temple, and having bowed before God, offered his prayers.

At this same time it happened that the empire of the Assyrians was overthrown by the Medes; I will explain this elsewhere. The king of the Babylonians, whose name was Baladan, sent envoys to Hezekiah bearing gifts, and urged him to become his ally and friend. Hezekiah gladly received the envoys, entertained them, and showed them his treasuries, his store of weapons, and all the rest of his wealth, however much he possessed in precious stones and gold; and after giving them gifts to carry back to Baladan, he sent them home.

When the prophet Isaiah came to him and asked where these visitors had come from, he said they had come from Babylon, sent by God, and that he had shown them everything, so that, seeing his wealth and power, they might form a judgment from it and report accordingly to their king. The prophet, taking this up, said: "Know that not long from now this wealth of yours will be carried off to Babylon, and your descendants will be made eunuchs, and, having lost their manhood, will serve as slaves to the king of Babylon; for this is what God foretells." Hezekiah, grieved at what had been said, replied that he would not wish such disasters to befall his nation, but since it was not possible to alter what God had decreed, he prayed that peace might prevail for the rest of his own life. Berosus too mentions Baladan, king of the Babylonians.

This prophet was, by common consent, divine and marvelous in his truthfulness; trusting that he had never spoken anything false, he set down in writing everything he had prophesied and left it behind, to be recognized by later generations from its fulfillment. And not this prophet alone, but twelve others as well did the same, and whatever misfortune...

But we will report each of these prophecies later, one by one. Hezekiah lived out the time we have mentioned, passing the whole of it in peace, and died at the age of fifty-four, having reigned twenty-nine years. His son Manasseh succeeded to the kingdom; his mother, a native woman, was named Echiba.

Manasseh broke completely with his father's practices and turned to the opposite course, displaying every kind of wickedness in his conduct and omitting no form of impiety, but imitating the transgressions of the Israelites, who had perished for their sins against God. He even dared to defile the temple of God, and the city, and the whole land. Starting from his contempt for God, he set out to kill all the righteous men among the Hebrews, and he spared not even the prophets — some of these he slaughtered daily, so that Jerusalem ran with blood. God, angered by this, sent prophets to the king and to the people, through whom he threatened them with the same disasters that had befallen their Israelite brothers when they insulted him.

They did not believe the words, though by them they could have gained escape from every evil; but by the deeds they learned that what the prophets said was true. For when they persisted in the same course, God stirred up war against them from the king of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, who sent an army into Judea and ravaged their land, and took King Manasseh by treachery, brought him before himself, and held him captive to inflict whatever punishment he wished. Manasseh, now understanding the evils he was in and considering himself the cause of them all, begged God to make his enemy kind and merciful toward him. God, hearing his supplication, granted him this, and Manasseh, released by the king of the Babylonians, was restored safely to his own land.

Once back in Jerusalem, he was eager, so far as it was possible, to cast out from his soul even the memory of his former sins against God, which he had set himself to commit, and he practiced every form of piety toward him. He purified the temple, cleansed the city, and thereafter cared for one thing alone: to render thanks to God for his deliverance and to keep him well disposed toward him for the rest of his life. He also taught the people to do the same, having learned by his own narrow escape what disaster the opposite course brings. He repaired the altar and performed the customary sacrifices, as Moses had ordained. Having set in order the affairs of worship in the manner required,

he also took care for the security of Jerusalem, repairing the old walls with great effort and adding another wall to them, raising very high towers, and making the fortresses before the city, together with all the supplies useful for them, including provisions of every kind, stronger than before. Indeed, so thoroughly did he reform himself in these respects that he passed the remainder of his life in such a way as to be counted blessed and enviable, reckoning his happiness from the time he began to worship God. He lived sixty-seven years in all and ended his life, having reigned fifty-five of them. He was buried in his own gardens, and the kingdom passed to his son Amon, whose mother, named Emaselme, was from the city of Jazabate.

This man imitated the deeds his father had dared while young, and, plotted against by his own servants, he died in his own house, having lived twenty-four years and reigned two of them. The people avenged him on his murderers, and they buried Amon beside his father, and handed the kingdom over to his son Josiah, who was eight years old.

His mother was from the city of Bosketh, and her name was Iedis. Josiah was by nature outstanding and well disposed toward virtue, taking the practices of King David as the aim and standard for the whole conduct of his life. At the age of twelve he already displayed piety and justice: he taught the people wisdom and urged them

to abandon the belief in idols, since they were not gods, and to worship the god of their fathers instead. Reviewing the deeds of his ancestors, he corrected wisely whatever had gone wrong, as one who, though young, was most capable of perceiving what was needed, while whatever he found rightly established he kept in place and imitated. All this he did by wisdom and by a natural gift of understanding, and also

by following the counsel and tradition of his elders. For by adhering to the laws in matters concerning the order of the city and piety toward the divine, he restored the prosperity that, because of the lawlessness of earlier kings, had failed to appear and had in fact vanished. Going about the whole city and the entire land, the king cut down the sacred groves dedicated to foreign gods and demolished

their altars, and whatever votive offering had been dedicated to them by his ancestors he tore down in contempt. In this way he turned the people from devotion to these gods to the worship of God, offering at his altar the customary sacrifices and burnt offerings. He appointed certain judges and overseers to administer the affairs of each community, so that they should

place justice above everything and guard it no less carefully than their own souls. Sending gold and silver throughout the whole land, he ordered those who were willing to bring contributions for the repair of the temple, each according to his wish and his means. When the money had been brought in, he put in charge of the care of the temple and the expenditure for it the governor of the city, Amasias,

the scribe Saphas, the keeper of records Joatos, and the high priest Eliakias, who, without any delay or postponement, provided architects and everything else useful for the repair, and set to work at once. And the temple, thus repaired, made the king's piety plain for all to see. Now in the eighteenth year of his reign he sent to

Eliakias the high priest, ordering him to melt down whatever was surplus and make from it mixing bowls, libation vessels, and cups for the service, and further, whatever gold and silver there was in the treasuries, to bring it forward as well and spend it in the same way on such vessels. As Eliakias the high priest was bringing forward the gold, he came upon the sacred books of Moses lying in the

temple, and taking them out he gave them to the scribe Saphas. He, having read them, went to the king and reported that everything he had ordered done had been completed, and he also read the books aloud to him. Hearing them, the king tore his garments, and calling the high priest Eliakias and the scribe himself, along with some of his closest friends, he sent them to the prophetess Oolda, the wife

of Sallum, a woman of some standing and distinguished by her noble birth, instructing them, once they had come before her, to say: "Propitiate God, and try to make him favorable to us, for there is fear that, since our ancestors transgressed the laws of Moses, we may be in danger of being uprooted and, cast out of our own land into a foreign one, stripped of everything, end our lives in misery." Hearing this from those who had been sent,

the prophetess answered, through those same men whom the king had commissioned, ordering them to go back and tell the king that God had already passed sentence against the people, a sentence that no supplication could annul: to destroy the people, cast them out of their land, and strip them of all the good things now theirs, because they had transgressed the laws and, over so long a time, had not repented, even though the prophets

had urged them to come to their senses and had foretold the punishment for their impieties — a punishment which, so that they might be convinced that he is God and had lied about nothing of what he had announced to them through the prophets, he would certainly bring to pass. Yet for Josiah's own sake, since he had proved himself just, God would hold off the calamities for the present, and only after his death would he send upon the people the sufferings decreed against them. Those who had heard the woman's prophecy

came and reported it to the king. He sent word everywhere ordering the people to gather at Jerusalem, both priests and Levites, commanding that everyone, of every age, be present. Once they had assembled, he first read to them the sacred books, then, standing on the platform in the midst of the crowd, compelled them to swear oaths and give their word that they would indeed worship God and keep

the laws of Moses. They eagerly assented and undertook to do what the king urged, sacrificing at once, and, once the omens proved favorable, they begged God to be gracious and merciful to them. The king also ordered the high priest that any superfluous vessel which their ancestors had set up in the temple for idols and foreign gods should be thrown out. When a great many of these had been gathered together,

he burned them and scattered their ashes, and he killed the priests of the idols who were not of the line of Aaron. Having accomplished this in Jerusalem, he went out into the countryside and destroyed what King Jeroboam had built there in honor of foreign gods, and he burned the bones of the false prophets upon the altar that Jeroboam

had first built. A prophet had foretold this long before, coming down to Jeroboam while he was sacrificing, with the whole people listening, and announcing in advance what would happen: that someone of David's line named Josiah would do the things foretold. This came to pass three hundred and sixty-one years later. After this, King Josiah went also to the rest of the Israelites who

had escaped captivity and slavery under the Assyrians, and persuaded them to give up their impious practices and abandon the honors they paid to foreign gods, and instead to worship the ancestral and greatest God and to hold fast to him. He searched their houses, villages, and cities, in case anyone secretly kept any idols. And not only this, but

he also removed the chariots devoted to worship that stood ready for the kings, which their ancestors had made, and whatever else of that kind there was, to which they bowed down as to a god. Having thus purified the whole land, he called the people together to Jerusalem, and there celebrated the feast of unleavened bread and the one called Passover. For the Passover he gave the people newborn kids and twenty thousand lambs, and for burnt offerings

three thousand oxen. The chief priests too gave, for the Passover, two thousand six hundred lambs to the priests, and their leaders gave five thousand lambs and five hundred oxen to the Levites. With such an abundant supply of sacrificial animals provided, they carried out the sacrifices according to the laws of Moses, with each of the priests instructing and assisting the crowds; and the reason no other festival like it

had been held by the Hebrews since the days of Samuel the prophet was that everything was carried out in accordance with the laws and with the ancient observance of ancestral custom. Josiah lived afterward in peace, in wealth, and in good repute among all, and ended his life in the following way. Necho, king of the Egyptians, raised an army

and marched to the Euphrates to make war on the Medes and the Babylonians, who had overthrown the Assyrian empire, for he desired to rule over Asia. When he reached the city of Mende, which lay within Josiah's kingdom, Josiah barred his way with an army, refusing to let him march through his own land on his campaign against the Medes. Necho sent a herald to him, saying that he was marching not

against him, but toward the Euphrates, and urging him not to provoke him into fighting, when all he was doing was preventing him from proceeding where he had decided to go. But Josiah would not accept Necho's proposal; he stood firm in refusing him passage through his own land — driven to this, I think, by fate, so that Necho might find a pretext against him. For as Josiah was drawing up

his forces and riding in a chariot from wing to wing, one of the Egyptians shot him with an arrow and put an end to his eagerness for battle. In great pain from the wound, he ordered the army recalled and returned to Jerusalem. There he died of the wound and was buried in the tombs of his fathers with great splendor, having lived thirty-nine years and reigned

thirty-one of them. Great mourning was held for him by the whole people for many days, in grief and dejection, and Jeremiah the prophet composed for him a mournful funeral ode, which survives even to this day. This prophet also left in writing predictions of the disasters to come upon the city, including the very capture that has now befallen us in our own time, and the fall

of Babylon as well. Nor was he the only one to foretell these things to the people; so did the prophet Ezekiel, who was the first to leave behind two books written about these matters. Both men were priests by birth, but Jeremiah lived in Jerusalem from the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign until the city and the temple were destroyed. What happened, however, concerning

this prophet we will relate in its proper place. When Josiah died, as we have said, his son succeeded to the kingdom — his name was Joazos, and he had already reached his twenty-third year. He reigned in Jerusalem; his mother was Amitale, from the city of Tomane; he was impious and vile in character. The king of the Egyptians, returning from the battle, sent for Joazos to come to

him at the city called Amatha, in Syria, and when he came, bound him, and gave the kingdom to his elder half-brother, named Eliakim, changing his name to Joakim. On the land he imposed a hundred talents of silver and one of gold. This sum Joakim paid in full, and he led Joazos away to Egypt,

Joachaz died there, having reigned three months and ten days. Joakim's mother was named Zabouda, and she came from a city called Aboumas. He was by nature unjust and wicked, neither pious toward God nor decent toward men. In the fourth year of his reign, a man named Nebuchadnezzar took over the kingdom of Babylon.

At about the same time Nebuchadnezzar marched up with a great force against the city of Carchemish, which lies on the Euphrates river, intending to make war on Necho, king of the Egyptians; for all Syria was under Necho's control. When Necho learned of the Babylonian's intentions and of the campaign being mounted against him, he too did not hold back but set out for the Euphrates with a large force to defend himself against Nebuchadnezzar.

In the battle that followed Necho was defeated and lost many tens of thousands of men. Nebuchadnezzar then crossed the Euphrates and took over Syria as far as Pelusium, with the exception of Judea. When Nebuchadnezzar had already reigned four years, it was the eighth year of Joakim's rule over the Hebrews, and the Babylonian marched against the Jews with a large force, demanding tribute from Joakim and threatening war if he refused.

Joakim, fearing the threat, bought peace at the price of money, bringing him the tribute assessed for three years. In the third year, hearing that the Egyptians were marching against the Babylonian, he withheld the tribute — but his hope was disappointed, for the Egyptians did not dare undertake the campaign.

The prophet Jeremiah foretold these things day after day, warning that it was vain to place hope in the Egyptians, and that the city must be laid waste by the king of Babylon, and King Joakim delivered into his hands. But since none of those who might have been saved by heeding him existed, his words did no good; both the people and the rulers, hearing them, disregarded them, and took offense at what he said,

charging Jeremiah with prophesying evil against the king, as though he were a bird-diviner working against him; and bringing him to trial, they sought his condemnation and punishment. All the others cast their votes against him, condemning him along with the elders, but those of wiser judgment released the prophet from custody and advised the rest to do Jeremiah no harm.

For, they said, he was not the only one who had foretold the city's future; Micah before him had proclaimed the same things, as had many others, none of whom had suffered anything at the hands of the kings of that time, but were rather honored as prophets of God. With these words they calmed the crowd and rescued Jeremiah from the punishment that had been voted against him.

Jeremiah then wrote down all his own prophecies, and while the people were fasting and assembled in the temple, in the ninth month of the fifth year of Joakim's reign, he read aloud the scroll he had composed concerning the things that were going to happen to the city, the temple, and the people. When the officials heard it, they took the scroll from him and ordered both him and his scribe Baruch to remove themselves from sight, so that they would not be found by anyone,

and they themselves carried the scroll and gave it to the king. He, with his friends present, ordered his own scribe to take it and read it. But when the king heard what was in the scroll, he grew angry and tore it apart and threw it into the fire, destroying it, and he ordered that Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch be sought out and brought before him for punishment. These two, however, escaped his wrath.

Not long afterward the king of Babylon marched against him, receiving him without a fight — out of fear at what had been foretold by this prophet, and reckoning that he would suffer nothing terrible, he neither shut his gates nor made war. But once inside, the Babylonian did not keep faith: he put to death the strongest and most handsome of the Jerusalemites, along with King Joakim himself,

whom he ordered to be thrown out unburied before the walls. He set up Joakim's son, also named Joakim, as king of the land and the city, and taking captive three thousand of the men of rank, he led them away to Babylon; among them was the prophet Ezekiel, still a boy. Such was the end that befell King Joakim, who lived thirty-six years and reigned eleven of them.

His successor to the kingship, Joakim, whose mother was named Nehushta and was a native of the city, reigned three months and ten days. But the king of Babylon, having just granted him the kingdom, was at once seized with fear — he feared that Joakim, remembering the killing of his father, might revolt against him — and so he sent a force and besieged Joakim in Jerusalem.

Joakim, being by nature good and just, did not think it right to let the city be endangered on his account, but went out and surrendered himself, his mother, and his relatives to the generals sent by the Babylonian, having first received oaths from them that neither they nor the city would suffer any harm. But that pledge did not even last a year.

The king of Babylon did not keep it, but instructed his generals to take all the people in the city who were young in age and skilled craftsmen, bind them, and bring them to him; these numbered in all eighteen thousand three hundred and thirty-two, along with Joakim himself, his mother, and his friends. These he brought to himself and kept under guard; and Joakim's uncle Zedekiah he appointed king,

first taking an oath from him that he would truly keep the land for him, attempt no rebellion, and show no favor to the Egyptians. Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he took the throne; he was Joakim's brother by the same mother, and he showed contempt for what was right and proper. Indeed those around him, young in years, were impious,

and the whole populace, given free rein, committed whatever outrages they pleased. For this reason the prophet Jeremiah came to him often and admonished him, urging him to abandon his other impieties and lawless acts, to attend to justice, and neither to cling to the leaders because they were wicked among the people, nor to believe the false prophets who deceived him by claiming the Babylonian would no longer make war on the city, and that

the Egyptians would march against him and win. These things, Jeremiah said, were not true, nor were they bound to happen. As long as Zedekiah listened to the prophet saying these things, he was persuaded and agreed that they spoke the truth and that it was to his advantage to believe them; but his friends corrupted him again and drew him away from the prophet's words toward what they themselves wished.

Ezekiel too prophesied in Babylon the calamities that were going to befall the people, and wrote these things down and sent them to Jerusalem. Zedekiah, however, disbelieved their prophecies for the following reason: everything else the two of them said agreed — that the city would be captured and Zedekiah himself taken prisoner — but they disagreed on this point: Ezekiel said Zedekiah would not see Babylon, while Jeremiah told him that

the king of Babylon would lead him there in chains. And because the two did not say the same thing, Zedekiah judged that even the points on which they seemed to agree were not true either — although in fact everything came to pass for him just as the prophecies said, as we shall show at the appropriate point. Having maintained the alliance with the Babylonians for eight years, he then broke faith with them and went over to the Egyptians, hoping

with their help to overthrow the Babylonians, in alliance with whom that hope had arisen. When the king of Babylon learned of this, he marched against him, ravaged his land, took his strongholds, and came against the city of the Jerusalemites to besiege it. The Egyptian king, hearing that his ally Zedekiah was in this position, took a large force and came into Judea to lift the siege.

The Babylonian withdrew from Jerusalem, met the Egyptians, joined battle with them, defeated them, put them to flight, and pursued them out of all Syria. But when the king of Babylon had withdrawn from Jerusalem, the false prophets deceived Zedekiah, telling him that the Babylonian would no longer make war on him and his people, and that those of his countrymen whom he had carried off

from their homeland to Babylon would return, along with all the vessels of the temple which the king had plundered from the shrine. But Jeremiah came forward and prophesied the opposite of this, and the truth: that they were acting wickedly and deceiving the king, that no benefit at all would come to them from the Egyptians, but that the Babylonian, having defeated the Egyptians, was about to march against Jerusalem, and

would besiege it and destroy the people by famine, and would carry off as captives those who survived, and would plunder their property, and would carry away the wealth in the temple and then burn it down and raze the city, and that we would be enslaved to him and his descendants for seventy years. Then the Persians and the Medes would put an end to our slavery under them, having overthrown

the Babylonians, and from them we would be released to return to this land and rebuild the temple again and restore Jerusalem. When Jeremiah said these things, most people believed him, but the officials and the impious dismissed him as out of his mind. Once, when he happened to be going to his home town, called Anathoth, twenty stadia from Jerusalem, he met on the road

one of the officials, who seized and detained him, falsely accusing him of deserting to the Babylonians. Jeremiah said the man was bringing a false charge against him, and insisted he was simply walking to his home town. But the man, not believing him, seized him and brought him to trial before the officials, who, after he endured every kind of abuse and torture, kept him under guard for punishment. For some time

he continued to suffer unjustly in this way. In the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, the king of Babylon marched a second time against Jerusalem, and having encamped before it, besieged it with the utmost determination for eighteen months. Two of the greatest afflictions struck the besieged people of Jerusalem at the same time: famine and a devastating plague, both raging

fiercely. While confined in prison, the prophet Jeremiah did not keep silent, but cried out and proclaimed, urging the people to open the gates and receive the Babylonian; for by doing this, he said, they would be saved, household and all, but if not, they would perish. He foretold that whoever remained in the city would surely die, either consumed by famine or by the enemy's sword,

but that whoever fled to the enemy would escape death. Even in the midst of these terrible circumstances, the officials who heard this did not believe him, but went to the king in anger to report it, accusing the prophet and demanding he be put to death as a madman who was breaking the people's spirit beforehand and, through the discouraging pronouncements of a coward, undermining the readiness

of the people to risk danger for him and for their homeland. The prophet, they said, was urging them to flee to the enemy, saying the city would be captured and everyone would perish. The king himself, out of decency and justice, was not personally provoked by this, but so as not to offend the officials by opposing their purpose at such a critical moment, he handed the prophet over to them to do with as they wished.

When the king had granted them this, they went straight to the prison, took him, and lowered him into a pit full of mud, so that he might die his own particular death by suffocation. He was there, sunk in the mire up to his neck. But one of the king's household servants, a man held in honor and an Ethiopian by birth, reported the prophet's plight

to the king, saying that his friends and officials had acted wrongly in sinking the prophet into the mud, and that they had thereby devised for him a death more bitter than execution by the sword. Hearing this, the king regretted having handed the prophet over to the officials, and ordered the Ethiopian to take thirty of the royal guard along with ropes and everything

useful for saving the prophet, and to draw Jeremiah up without delay. The Ethiopian, taking the men assigned to him, pulled the prophet out of the mud and released him unguarded. The king then summoned him secretly and asked what he could tell him from God, and what he could reveal concerning the present situation. Jeremiah said he did have something to say, but that if he spoke it he would not be believed,

nor would his advice be heeded — 'instead, as though I had done some great wrong, your friends have resolved to destroy me,' he said. 'And where now are those who told you the Babylonian would never march against us again, and deceived you? I am afraid now to tell the truth, lest you condemn me to death.' When the king swore an oath to him that he would neither kill him himself nor hand him over to

the officials, Jeremiah, taking courage from the pledge given him, advised him to surrender the city to the Babylonians; for God, he said, was prophesying this to him through himself, if indeed the king wished to be saved and escape the danger now threatening him, so that neither the city would fall to the ground nor the temple be burned — for its burning would be the cause of these calamities for the citizens and for himself and his household,

of the disaster. Hearing this, the king said he himself wished to do as Jeremiah advised, and agreed that it would be to his advantage to do so, but that he feared the countrymen who had deserted to the Babylonians, lest he be slandered by them to the king and punished. The prophet reassured him, telling him his fear was groundless, for no harm would come to him at the hands of the Babylonians if he surrendered, neither to himself nor to his

children nor his wives, and the temple too would remain unharmed. Having said this, Jeremiah was released by the king, who instructed him to reveal to none of the citizens — nor even to the officials, should they learn he had been summoned by the king and ask what he had said when called before him — anything of what had been decided between them, but to claim to them, if pressed, that he had merely begged

Zedekiah must not be kept in chains or in prison. This is what he said to the men who had come to the prophet asking what he had gone to the king to plead for. So much for that exchange. As for the siege of Jerusalem, the Babylonian pressed it with the utmost intensity and energy. He built great siege towers and from them kept the men stationed on the walls at bay, and he raised earthworks all around the circuit of the city equal in height to the walls themselves.

The people inside bore the siege with courage and resolve. They were worn down neither by famine nor by the plague that ravaged them, but even while these afflictions drove them within, they kept their spirits strong for the fight, undaunted by the enemy's stratagems and machines, countering everything the Babylonians devised with counter-devices of their own — so that the whole contest, for both the Babylonians and the people of Jerusalem, turned on sharpness of wit and understanding, the one side supposing they could destroy the city more readily by this means, the other placing their hope of survival in nothing but never tiring, never giving up, and matching invention with invention until the enemy's engines were shown to be useless. They held out like this for eighteen months, until they were finally worn down by famine and by the missiles the enemy hurled at them from the towers.

The city was taken in the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign, on the ninth day of the fourth month. It was the generals of the Babylonians, to whom Nebuchadnezzar had entrusted the siege, who took it — he himself was residing in the city of Arabatha at the time. As for the names of the generals, in case anyone wishes to know who it was that stormed and subdued Jerusalem, they were Regalsaros, Aremantos, Semegaros, Nabosaris, and Acharampsaris.

When the city was taken, around the middle of the night, and the enemy generals had entered the temple, King Zedekiah learned of it and, taking his wives and children, his officers, and his friends, fled with them from the city through the strong ravine and out into the desert. But some deserters told the Babylonians of this, and at daybreak they set out in pursuit and, overtaking him not far from Jericho, surrounded him. The friends and officers who had fled with Zedekiah, when they saw the enemy close at hand, abandoned him and scattered, each man going his own way and looking to save himself.

Zedekiah, left behind with only a few companions, was taken alive by the enemy, and together with his children and wives was brought before the king. When he was brought into his presence, Nebuchadnezzar began to call him impious and a breaker of oaths, and forgetful of the earlier pledges he had made to preserve his rule for him. He reproached him too for his ingratitude — for it was Nebuchadnezzar himself who had taken the kingdom from Jehoiakim and given it to him, and yet he had used the power granted him against the very man who had granted it. "But God is great," he said, "who has hated your conduct and put you in our hands."

Having spoken these words to Zedekiah, he ordered his sons and his friends killed at once, before Zedekiah's own eyes and those of the other captives. Then he had Zedekiah's eyes put out, bound him, and led him away to Babylon. And this is exactly what Jeremiah and Ezekiel had prophesied would happen to him — that he would be seized and brought before the Babylonian, that he would speak with him face to face, and that his eyes would see the eyes of the other. This much Jeremiah had foretold; but once blinded and led to Babylon, Zedekiah did not see that city — just as Ezekiel had foretold.

We have now related events sufficient to reveal the nature of God to those who do not know it — that it is manifold and versatile, and meets each occasion in its due season, foretelling what must come to pass, while the ignorance and unbelief of men, by which they are prevented from foreseeing anything that is to happen, leaves them unguarded and exposed to disaster, so that there is no way for them to escape the trial that comes from it.

So ended the lives of those kings descended from the house of David, twenty-one in all down to the last king, who reigned altogether five hundred and fourteen years, six months, and ten days — of which the first of them, Saul, who was not of that same tribe, held the throne for twenty years.

The Babylonian sent his general Nebuzaradan to Jerusalem to plunder the temple, ordering him at the same time to burn it down along with the palace, to raze the city to the ground, and to remove the people to Babylonia. Nebuzaradan, arriving at Jerusalem in the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign, plundered the temple and carried off the vessels of God — gold and silver — including the great laver that Solomon had dedicated, and further the bronze pillars and their capitals, the golden tables, and the lampstands. Having removed all this, he set fire to the temple on the new moon of the fifth month, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign and the eighteenth of Nebuchadnezzar's. He also burned the palace and razed the city.

The temple was burned four hundred and seventy years, six months, and ten days after it had been built. From the exodus of the people out of Egypt to that time was one thousand sixty-two years, six months, and ten days. From the flood down to the destruction of the temple the whole span was one thousand nine hundred fifty-seven years, six months, and ten days. And from the birth of Adam to the events surrounding the temple, the years amount to four thousand five hundred thirteen, six months, and ten days. Such, then, is the sum of these years; and as for what happened at each of these occurrences, we have set it out in detail.

The general of the Babylonian king, after razing Jerusalem and removing the people, took captive the high priest Seraiah, the priest next in rank after him, Zephaniah, the officers who guarded the temple — three in number — the eunuch in command of the soldiers, seven of Zedekiah's friends, his scribe, and sixty other officers. All these, together with the vessels he had plundered, he brought to the king at Riblah, a city of Syria.

The king ordered the high priest and the officers beheaded there, but he himself led all the other captives, together with Zedekiah, in chains to Babylon, and also Jehozadak the high priest, son of the high priest Seraiah, whom the Babylonian had put to death at the city of Riblah in Syria, as we have already related.

Now that we have gone through the line of the kings and shown who they were and how long they reigned, I have thought it necessary also to give the names of the high priests and to say who they were, those who held the high priesthood alongside the kings. Zadok, then, was the first high priest of the temple that Solomon built; after him his son Ahimaas succeeded to the honor, and after Ahimaas, Azariah; after him, Joram; after Joram, Ios; after him, Axioramos; after Axioramos, Phideas; after Phideas, Sudaias; after Sudaias, Ioelos; after him, Jotham; after Jotham, Uriah; after Uriah, Neriah; after Neriah, Odaias; after him, Salloumos; after Salloumos, Elkiah; after Elkiah, Azaros; and after him, Jehozadak, who was carried captive to Babylon. All these succeeded to the high priesthood, son after father.

When the king arrived in Babylon, he kept Zedekiah in prison until his death, and after burying him in royal fashion, he dedicated the vessels plundered from the temple of Jerusalem to his own gods, settled the people in the land of Babylonia, and released the high priest from his chains.

The general Nebuzaradan, having taken the people of the Hebrews captive, left behind there the poor and those who had deserted, and appointed as their governor Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, a man of noble birth, moderate and just. He charged them to work the land and pay a fixed tribute to the king. He also took the prophet Jeremiah out of prison and urged him to come with him to Babylon, for the king had ordered that everything be furnished him there; but if he did not wish this, he was to say where he had decided to remain, so that word of it could be sent to the king.

The prophet was unwilling either to follow him or to remain anywhere else; he was content to live out his life among the ruins of his homeland and its wretched remnants. Learning of his choice, the general instructed Gedaliah, whom he had left behind, to take every care of him at once and to supply him with whatever he needed, and after presenting him with costly gifts, he released him. Jeremiah remained behind at Dana, a town in the district called Mosfotha, having asked Nebuzaradan to release along with him his disciple Baruch, son of Neriah, who came from a very distinguished family and had been unusually well educated in his native tongue. Having settled these matters, Nebuzaradan set out for Babylon.

Meanwhile those who had fled Jerusalem during the siege and scattered through the countryside, on hearing that the Babylonians had withdrawn and had left some remnants behind in the land of the people of Jerusalem, along with those who would work it, gathered from every quarter and came to Gedaliah at Mizpah. Among them the leaders were Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah, and Jaazaniah, along with others besides; and there was among them a certain Ishmael, of the royal family, a wicked and thoroughly treacherous man, who during the siege of Jerusalem had fled to Baalis, king of the Ammonites, and had spent that time with him.

Gedaliah persuaded these men, once they had come to him, to remain at once without any fear of the Babylonians — for if they worked the land, he told them, they would suffer no harm. He swore to this again and again, telling them to regard him as their protector, so that if anyone troubled them they would find him ready to act on their behalf. He advised them to settle, each sending for his own household, in whatever town he wished, to rebuild the ruins and dwell there. He told them to prepare, while there was still time, grain, wine, and oil, so that they would have provisions through the winter. Having said this to them, he sent them off through the country to whatever place each wished to go.

When word spread among the nations around Judea that Gedaliah had welcomed with kindness those who had come to him as fugitives, and had allowed them to settle and work the land on condition of paying tribute to the Babylonian, they too came flocking to Gedaliah and settled in the country. Observing the land and Gedaliah's kindness and generosity, Johanan and the officers with him came to love him greatly. But Baalis, king of the Ammonites, they said, had sent Ishmael to kill him treacherously and in secret, so that he himself might rule over the Israelites, since he was of the royal line.

They said they could save Gedaliah from this plot if he would allow them to kill Ishmael, since no one would know of it; for they said they feared that if Gedaliah were murdered by him, it would mean the utter ruin of what remained of the strength of the Israelites. But Gedaliah declared he did not believe them, that they were bringing such a charge against a man who had done nothing but good to him — it was not reasonable, he said, that a man in such dire straits, having failed to find what he needed nowhere else, should turn out to be so wicked and impious toward his own benefactor as to plot to kill the very man who had saved him from being plotted against by others, when no one else was scheming against him.

Even so, he said, if this should prove true, it would be better for him to die at that man's hand than to destroy a man who had taken refuge with him, trusted him with his own safety, and placed himself in his keeping. So Johanan and the officers with him, unable to persuade Gedaliah, went away. Thirty days later, Ishmael came to Gedaliah at the town of Mizpah with ten men. Gedaliah received them at a lavish table with gifts of hospitality and, growing warm with drink, entertained Ishmael and his companions generously.

But when Ishmael saw him in this state, sunk in insensibility and sleep from the wine, he sprang up with his ten companions and cut down Gedaliah and all who were reclining with him at the banquet. After this slaughter he went out by night and murdered all the Jews in the town, as well as the soldiers the Babylonians had left behind there. The next day, eighty men came from the countryside to Gedaliah bearing gifts, none of them knowing what had happened. Seeing them, Ishmael called them inside as if to see Gedaliah, and once they had entered he shut the outer gate and slaughtered them, throwing their bodies into a deep pit so that they would not be found.

Of these eighty men, those who had begged not to be killed until they had handed over what they had hidden in the fields — furniture, clothing, and grain — were spared. On hearing this, Ishmael spared these men. But the people who were in Mizpah, along with the women and children, he took captive, among them the daughters of King Zedekiah, whom Nebuzaradan, the Babylonian general, had left in Gedaliah's care. Having done all this, he made his way to the king of the Ammonites.

When Johanan and the officers with him heard what Ishmael had done at Mizpah and of Gedaliah's death, they were outraged, and each taking his own armed men, they set out to make war on Ishmael and overtook him by the spring at Hebron. Those whom Ishmael had taken captive, on seeing Johanan and the officers, rejoiced, supposing help had come for them, and abandoning the man who had captured them, went over to Johanan. Ishmael, with eight men, fled to the king of the Ammonites. Johanan, taking those he had rescued from Ishmael's hands, along with the eunuchs, the women, and the children, arrived at a place called Mandra.

He remained there that day, but they had resolved to set out from there for Egypt, fearing that the Babylonians would kill them if they stayed in the country, out of anger over the murder of Gedaliah, whom the Babylonians themselves had appointed governor. This was the situation at that time.

While they were deliberating this course, Johanan son of Kareah and the officers who were with him came to the prophet Jeremiah and urged him to entreat God on their behalf, since they were at a loss what to do, and to show them his will. They swore that they would do whatever Jeremiah told them. When the prophet had promised to intercede for them with God, it happened that after ten days God appeared to him and told him to make known to Johanan and the other officers and all the people that if they remained in that country, he would be present with them, would care for them, and would keep them safe from the Babylonians whom they feared; but if they went to Egypt, he would abandon them and, in anger, would treat them just as they knew their kinsmen had been treated before.

When the prophet reported these words of God to Johanan and the people, they did not believe that God was foretelling this to them; they claimed instead that he was commanding them, in obedience to that same command, to remain in the country, and that he was falsifying God's word only as a favor to his own disciple Baruch, persuading them to stay so that they might be destroyed by the Babylonians. So the people and Johanan disregarded the counsel that God had given them through the prophet, and set out for Egypt, taking with them both Jeremiah and Baruch.

After they arrived there, God revealed to the prophet that the king of the Babylonians was about to march against the Egyptians, and ordered him to foretell to the people both the capture of Egypt and the fact that some of them the king would kill, while others he would take captive and lead away to Babylon. And this came to pass: for in the fifth year after the sack of Jerusalem, which was the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar marched against Coele-Syria, seized it, and made war also on the Moabites and the Ammanites. Having subdued these nations, he invaded Egypt to conquer it, killed the king then reigning, set up another in his place, and took the Jews who were there captive once again and led them to Babylon.

So the Hebrew people met with this end, having twice crossed the Euphrates as we have recorded: the people of the ten tribes were driven out from Samaria by the Assyrians when Hoshea was their king, and afterward the two tribes were driven out by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians and the Chaldeans, along with whoever had been left behind after Jerusalem was taken. Now Shalmaneser, having removed the Israelites, settled in their place the nation of the Cuthaeans, who had previously lived in the interior of Persia and Media, but were then called Samaritans, having taken the name of the region into which they were resettled. The king of the Babylonians, however, having led the two tribes away, settled no nation in their country in their place, and for this reason all Judea, Jerusalem, and the temple remained deserted for seventy years. The whole span of time that had elapsed from the captivity of the Israelites to the removal of the two tribes came to one hundred and thirty years, six months, and ten days.

Now Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, took the noblest of the Jewish children and the kinsmen of Zedekiah their king, who were conspicuous both for the vigor of their bodies and the beauty of their faces, and handed them over to tutors and to be cared for under them, making some of them eunuchs. He did the same with the children of the other nations he had conquered, choosing those taken in the prime of life; he supplied them food from his own table for their diet, and had them educated both in the customs of the country and in Chaldean letters, for they were capable enough in the learning he ordered them to pursue.

Among these were four of the family of Zedekiah, handsome and of good natural gifts, one of whom was called Daniel, another Ananias, another Misael, and the fourth Azarias. The Babylonian gave them new names and ordered them to use these instead: Daniel he called Baltasar, Ananias Sedrach, Misael Misach, and Azarias Abednago. The king, because of their extraordinary natural ability and their diligence in study and the progress they made in wisdom, held them in honor and continued to love them.

Daniel resolved, together with his kinsmen, to discipline himself and to abstain from the food that came from the king's table, and indeed from everything that had life in it. He went to Aschanes, the eunuch entrusted with their care, and asked him to take for himself what was regularly sent to them from the king, and instead to provide them with pulse and dates for their food, and whatever else he wished among things without life; for this was the diet toward which they were inclined, and they had no regard for the other. Aschanes said he was ready to serve their purpose, but was afraid that if they became visibly thin and their features changed, it would become obvious to the king; for their bodies and complexions would necessarily change along with their diet, and since the other children would appear healthy by comparison, he himself might be exposed as responsible and so face danger and punishment.

Being thus apprehensive, Aschanes was persuaded by them to provide this food for ten days as a trial; and if their bodily condition did not change, he was to continue with the same diet, since it would clearly do them no further harm, but if he saw them grow thinner and worse off than the others, he was to return them to their former diet. When it turned out that not only did this food do them no harm at all, but that they became better nourished and larger in body than the others, so that those fed on royal provision seemed the more deficient while Daniel's companions seemed to be living amid abundance and every luxury, from that time on Aschanes safely took for himself what the king daily sent to the children in the customary way, and supplied them instead with the food already mentioned.

Because of this their souls became pure and keen for learning, and their bodies more vigorous for hard exertion, since they were not weighed down by the burden of rich and varied food, nor were their minds made soft by the same cause; and so they readily mastered the whole range of learning that existed among the Hebrews and the Chaldeans. Daniel above all, being by now well versed in wisdom, applied himself earnestly to the interpretation of dreams, and God made himself manifest to him.

In the second year after the sack of Egypt, King Nebuchadnezzar saw a marvelous dream, the meaning of which God himself had revealed to him in his sleep; but on rising from his bed he forgot it. He summoned the Chaldeans, the magicians, and the diviners, told them he had seen a dream, and, explaining that the memory of what he had seen had escaped him, ordered them to tell him what the dream was and what it signified. When they said it was impossible for men to discover this, but that if he would describe the vision of the dream to them, they promised to explain its meaning, he threatened them with death if they did not tell him the dream itself, and ordered that all of them be put to death, since they had admitted they were unable to do what he demanded.

When Daniel heard that the king had ordered all the wise men to be killed, and that he himself, along with his kinsmen, was in danger among them, he went to Arioch, who had been entrusted with command over the king's bodyguard. He asked to learn from him the reason why the king had ordered all the wise men, Chaldeans, and magicians to be put to death, and on learning about the dream, and that they had provoked the king by admitting that, though commanded to reveal it, they were unable to do so because he had forgotten it, he urged Arioch to go in to the king and ask for a single night's delay for the magicians, so as to postpone their execution; for he hoped that by praying to God during that night he would come to know the dream.

Arioch reported this to the king, that Daniel requested this favor, and the king ordered that the execution of the magicians be postponed until he learned Daniel's answer. The young man, withdrawing with his kinsmen to his own quarters, spent the whole night imploring God to reveal to him the dream, and thereby to save also the magicians and Chaldeans who were bound to perish along with them, by disclosing to the king the vision he had seen in his sleep the night before, which he had forgotten, and making it plain to him, and so to rescue them from the king's anger. God, taking pity both on those in danger and admiring Daniel's wisdom, made both the dream and its interpretation known to him, so that he might also inform the king of what it signified.

When Daniel learned this from God, he rose up filled with joy, and telling his brothers, he lifted the spirits of those who had already given up hope of living and had resigned themselves to death, and awakened in them hope for their lives; and having given thanks to God, who had taken pity on them together, when day came he went to Arioch and asked to be brought before the king, saying that he wished to reveal to him the dream he said he had seen the night before.

Brought in before the king, Daniel first asked that the king not think him wiser than the other Chaldeans and magicians simply because, when none of them had been able to discover the dream, he was about to tell it; for this did not come about through his own skill, nor because he had labored over the matter more diligently than they, but because God, taking pity on us who were in danger of death, had made both the dream and its interpretation clear in answer to my prayer on behalf of my own life and that of my countrymen. For I grieved no less than you, who had been condemned by you to die, over your own reputation, that you had ordered men so noble and good to be put to death so unjustly -- men to whom you had demanded nothing that lay within human wisdom, but had required of them what belonged to God alone.

Now then, while you were anxious to know who would rule the whole world after you, God, wishing as you slept to reveal to you all who would reign, showed you a dream of this kind: you seemed to see a great statue standing, whose head was made of gold, whose shoulders and arms were of silver, whose belly and thighs were of bronze, and whose legs and feet were of iron. Then a stone broke off from a mountain, fell upon the statue, threw it down, and shattered it, leaving no part of it whole, so that the gold, the silver, the bronze, and the iron were reduced finer than flour, and, a violent wind rising, these were caught up by its force and scattered abroad, while the stone grew so great that it seemed to fill the whole earth.

This, then, is the dream you saw, and its interpretation is as follows: the golden head signifies you and the kings of Babylon before you; the arms and shoulders signify that your empire will be brought down by two kings; their power in turn another will overthrow, one clad in bronze coming from the west, and this power yet another will end, one like iron, and this one will prevail over all because of the nature of iron, for it is harder than gold, silver, or bronze. Daniel also explained to the king the meaning of the stone, but it did not seem right to me to relate this, since my task is to record what is past and what has already happened, not what is to come. If, however, anyone is eager for such precision and cannot resist inquiring further, wishing to learn also what is still uncertain about the future, let him take the trouble to read the Book of Daniel; he will find it among the sacred writings.

King Nebuchadnezzar, having heard this and recognized the dream, was astonished at Daniel's nature, and falling on his face, paid homage to Daniel in the manner in which men worship God; he even ordered that sacrifice be offered to him as to a god, and moreover, giving him the name of his own god, he made him governor over the whole kingdom, along with his kinsmen -- the very men who, through envy and malice, came into danger through offending the king, for the following reason.

The king had made a golden statue sixty cubits in height and six in breadth, and having set it up in the great plain of Babylon and being about to consecrate it, he summoned the leading men from every land over which he ruled, and instructed them first that, whenever they heard the sound of the trumpet, they should fall down and worship the statue, and he threatened that those who did not do so would be thrown into a furnace of fire. So when all, upon hearing the trumpet sound, fell down and worshiped the statue, Daniel's kinsmen alone, they say, refused to do this, unwilling to transgress their ancestral laws.

And these, once convicted, were immediately thrown into the fire, but by divine providence were saved and escaped death against all expectation. But, in my judgment, the reason was this: since they had done no wrong, when they were thrown into it, the fire did not touch them, and its burning power was too weak, since the children of God had bodies too strong for it to consume by its heat. This event convinced the king that they were righteous men beloved of God, and for this reason they continued afterward to be honored by him with every distinction.

A little while later, the king again saw, in his sleep, another vision: that he would be cast out of his kingdom and would live among wild beasts, and that after spending seven years in this way in the wilderness, he would receive his kingdom back again. Having seen this dream, he again summoned the magicians and asked them to interpret it and tell him what it signified. None of the others was able to discover the meaning of the dream or explain it to the king, but Daniel alone both interpreted it, and it happened just as he had foretold: for after spending the appointed time in the wilderness, with no one daring to seize power during the seven years, he prayed to God to receive back his kingdom, and returned to it. Let no one blame me for reporting each of these matters just as I have found them written.

through the written record, exactly as I find it set down in the ancient books. Indeed, right at the beginning of my history, I guarded myself in advance against anyone who might raise questions or complaints about these matters, by stating that I intended only to translate the Hebrew books into the Greek language and to report their contents, undertaking neither to add anything of my own to the facts nor to take anything away. King Nebuchadnezzar, after reigning forty-three years,

died, a vigorous man who had proved more fortunate than the kings before him. Berossus, too, recalls his achievements, in the third book of his History of Chaldea, where he writes as follows: "His father Nebuchadnezzar, on hearing that the satrap he had appointed over Egypt and the region of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had revolted from him, and being unable to bear the hardship of campaigning himself, put a portion of his forces under the command of his son Nebuchadnezzar, who was still a young man, and sent him against the rebel. Nebuchadnezzar engaged the rebel in battle, defeated him, and brought the territory back under his own rule as part of that same dominion. At that very time it happened that his father Nebuchadnezzar fell ill and died in the city

of Babylon, having reigned twenty-one years. When, not long afterward, the son learned of his father's death, he settled affairs in Egypt and the rest of the country, and put certain of his friends in charge of bringing the Jewish, Phoenician, and Syrian captives, along with the peoples from Egypt, back to Babylonia, together with the heaviest part of the army and the remaining spoils, while he himself set out with a small escort through the desert and made his way to Babylon. There he found affairs being administered by the Chaldeans and the kingdom preserved by the best man among them; and having taken possession of his father's entire realm, he arranged for the captives who arrived to be settled as colonies in the most suitable places in Babylonia, while he himself, from the spoils

of the war, lavishly adorned both the temple of Bel and the rest of the shrines, and generously endowed the city that already existed from the beginning as well as building others; and, to make it impossible for those besieging the city ever again to turn the river against it and use it in constructing their siege-works, he surrounded the inner city with three circuits of walls, and the outer part with three more, built of baked brick. Having fortified the city

impressively and adorned its gates in a manner befitting a sacred place, he built, adjoining his father's palace, a second palace, whose height and general magnificence it would perhaps be excessive to describe in detail — except to say that these great and towering works were completed in only fifteen days. In this palace he raised up stone terraces, giving them the appearance of mountains, and by planting them with every kind of tree he created

and built what is called the Hanging Garden, because his wife longed for the mountain scenery of her own country, having been raised in the region of Media. Megasthenes, too, mentions these works in the fourth book of his Indica, where he attempts to show that this king surpassed Heracles in courage and in the scale of his achievements, saying that he conquered a great part of Libya

and Iberia. Diocles as well mentions this king in the second book of his Persian History, as does Philostratus in his history of India and Phoenicia, saying that this king besieged Tyre for thirteen years, at a time when Ithobal was reigning over Tyre. Such, then, are the things reported about this king by all the various authors. After

the death of Nebuchadnezzar, his son Evil-Merodach succeeded to the kingdom. He immediately released Jeconiah, king of Jerusalem, from his chains, kept him among his closest friends, gave him many gifts, and set him above the other kings residing in Babylonia — for his father had not kept faith with Jeconiah, who had voluntarily surrendered himself, along with his wives, his children, and

his whole family, for the sake of his homeland, so that the city might not be razed after being taken by siege, as we have already related. When Evil-Merodach died, after reigning eighteen years, his son Neriglissar succeeded to the throne, and after holding it for forty years, he too ended his life. After him the succession passed to his son Labashi-Marduk, and

after he had reigned a total of only nine months, upon his death the throne passed to the man called Belshazzar, known among the Babylonians as Nabonnedus. Cyrus, king of the Persians, and Darius the Mede marched against him. And while the people of Babylon were under siege, an extraordinary and astonishing sight occurred: the king was reclining at dinner, drinking in a great hall built for royal banquets, in the company of his

concubines and his friends. It occurred to him to have brought from his own temple the sacred vessels of God, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried off as plunder from Jerusalem but had never made use of, having simply deposited them in his temple. Belshazzar, however, driven by his own recklessness to make use of them, was in the middle of drinking and blaspheming God when he saw a hand come forth out of the wall and begin writing

certain letters upon it. Thrown into confusion by the sight, he summoned the magicians and the Chaldeans — the whole class of men in Babylon capable of interpreting signs and dreams — so that they might explain to him what had been written. But when the magicians proved unable to discover anything or to say they understood it, the king, in his distress and in the depth of his grief over so

extraordinary an event, issued a proclamation throughout the whole country promising to give to whoever could make plain the writing and the meaning it conveyed a golden collar to wear about his neck, purple robes like those worn by the kings of the Chaldeans, and a third part of his own kingdom. When this proclamation was issued, the magicians redoubled their efforts and competed with one another to discover the meaning of the writing,

yet were no more successful than before. Seeing the king despondent over this, his grandmother began to encourage him, saying that there was a certain captive from Judea, brought from there by Nebuchadnezzar when he sacked Jerusalem, named Daniel — a wise man, skilled at discovering things beyond human reach and known only to God — who, when no one else had been able to tell

Nebuchadnezzar what he wanted to know, had brought to light the things he sought. She urged, therefore, that he send for the man and inquire of him about the writing, and condemn the ignorance of those who had failed to find its meaning, however grim what God was signifying might prove to be. On hearing this, Belshazzar summoned Daniel, and after conversing with him and learning about him and his wisdom — that a divine spirit

was present in him and that he alone was fully capable of discovering what did not occur to the minds of others — he asked him to tell him what had been written and to reveal its meaning; for if he did this, he would give him a purple robe to wear, a golden collar about his neck, and a third part of his own kingdom as an honor and reward for his wisdom, so that through these gifts he might become the most conspicuous of men in the eyes of all who saw him and asked

the reason he had received them. But Daniel asked that he keep his gifts for himself, for wisdom and what is divine, he said, cannot be bought, and ought to benefit those in need without payment; he would, however, reveal to him the meaning of the writing, which foretold the ruin of his life, because he had not learned piety even from the punishments by which his ancestor had been chastised for his outrages against God, nor had he refrained from devising anything beyond what belongs to human

nature. "On the contrary," he said, "even after Nebuchadnezzar was driven to live among the beasts because of his impieties, and after many supplications and entreaties was shown mercy and restored to human life and to his kingdom, and even though because of this he sang hymns to God as one who possesses all power and watches over mankind, right up until his death — you yourself have forgotten all this, and you have blasphemed

the divine many times over, and you have used his sacred vessels to serve wine to your concubines. God, seeing this, has grown angry with you, and through this writing he foretells the kind of end to which you must come. What the writing declares is this: MENE — this word, he said, in the Greek tongue signifies a number, meaning that God has numbered the time of your life and of your reign, and that only a little time

remains to you. TEKEL — this signifies a weight; God, having weighed the time of your reign, declares that it is already sinking down. PERES — this too, in the Greek tongue, signifies a fraction; therefore he will break your kingdom in pieces and divide it between the Medes and the Persians." When Daniel had explained to the king in this way the meaning of the writing on the wall, grief and calamity overtook Belshazzar,

as one would expect given how harsh the message revealed to him had been. Yet he did not, on account of the evils he had been told of, withhold from the man who had prophesied them the gifts he had promised to give, but bestowed them all — reasoning that the circumstances under which they would be given were his own affair and a matter of necessity, and had nothing to do with the man who had made the prophecy, whom he judged, on the strength of what had been agreed, to be a good and just man, even though

what was to come was grim. So he judged rightly: not long afterward he himself was captured, and the city was taken, when Cyrus, king of the Persians, marched against him. For it was under Belshazzar that the fall of Babylon took place, after he had reigned seventeen years. Such, then, is the end that we have learned befell the descendants of King Nebuchadnezzar. As for Darius, who together with his kinsman Cyrus put an end to

the Babylonian empire, he was sixty-two years old when he took Babylon. He was the son of Astyages, though he was known among the Greeks by a different name. He took Daniel the prophet with him to Media, granting him every honor and keeping him at his side; for Daniel was one of the three governors whom he set over the

three hundred and sixty satrapies — for that was the number Darius established for the empire. Now Daniel, holding such honor and enjoying such conspicuous favor with Darius, and being the one man Darius trusted above all others in every matter, as having the divine spirit within him, became, in being so honored, an object of envy; for those who see others held in greater honor than themselves by kings are always inclined to malice. Those who resented his high standing with Darius sought some occasion

for slander and accusation against him, but he gave them no grounds whatever; for being above money and disdaining every kind of profit, he considered it utterly shameful to accept anything even when it might rightly have been given him to take, and so he offered those who envied him no pretext for any charge against him. Since they had nothing they could report to the king that would harm him

in the honor he enjoyed from him, through shame or slander, they sought some other way to remove him from their path. Observing, then, that Daniel prayed to God three times a day, they concluded they had found the pretext by which they would destroy him. They went to Darius and reported to him that it had seemed good to his satraps and governors that for thirty days the populace should be forbidden

to petition or pray to anyone, whether man or god, other than himself, and that whoever transgressed this decree should be condemned to be thrown into the lions' den to perish. The king, not perceiving their treachery, and never suspecting that this scheme had been devised against Daniel, said he was pleased with what they had decided, and promising to ratify their proposal, published an edict

making known to the people what the satraps had resolved. All the rest, taking care not to transgress what had been commanded, kept quiet; but Daniel gave not the slightest thought to any of it, and, as was his custom, stood and prayed to God in full view of everyone. The satraps, once the pretext they had been eager to seize upon against Daniel presented itself, went at once to the king and accused

Daniel of being the only one to have transgressed the decree; for none of the others, they said, had dared to pray to their gods — not out of piety, but out of caution and self-preservation prompted by their envy. Supposing that Darius was acting out of an even greater favor toward Daniel than they had expected, so that he would readily grant him pardon even for defying his own commands, and being jealous of Daniel precisely on this account, they

would not relent toward any gentler course, but insisted that he be thrown, according to the law, into the lions' den. Darius, hoping that the divine power would rescue Daniel and that he would suffer no harm from the beasts, told him to bear what was happening with good courage; and once Daniel had been cast into the den, Darius sealed with his own seal the stone that lay across the opening in place of a door, and withdrew. Through

the whole night he neither ate nor slept, but remained in anguish over Daniel; and at daybreak he rose, went to the den, and finding the seal intact with which he had marked the stone before leaving it, opened it, and cried out, calling to Daniel and asking whether he was safe. When Daniel answered the king and said that he had suffered no harm, Darius ordered him drawn up out of the

den of beasts. His enemies, seeing that Daniel had suffered no harm, refused to attribute it to the divine and to God's providence over him, but claimed instead, thinking the lions had eaten their fill and so had not touched or approached Daniel, that this was the reason, and they said as much to the king. The king, detesting them for their wickedness, ordered a great quantity of meat thrown to the lions, and once

they were satisfied, he commanded that Daniel's enemies be thrown into the den, so that he might learn whether it was because they were full that the lions would not go near them. It became clear to Darius, once the satraps had been thrown to the beasts, that it was the divine power that had saved Daniel; for the lions spared none of them, but tore them all to pieces, as though they were ravenously hungry and starved for food. What provoked them was not

hunger, I think — since only a little before they had been gorged with abundant meat — but rather the wickedness of the men, which was evident even to these unreasoning creatures, for the sake of a punishment that came about by the choice of God. Once those who had plotted against Daniel had perished in this way, King Darius sent word throughout the whole country praising the God whom Daniel worships, and declaring that he alone

true and the only one who holds power over all things. He also held Daniel in the highest honor, appointing him first among his friends. Daniel, so distinguished and so celebrated for his reputation as one beloved of God, built at Ecbatana in Media a fortress, a most handsome piece of work and wonderfully constructed, which survives and is preserved to this day, and to those who see it looks as if it had just been built and finished on the very day someone happens to be viewing it, so fresh and undiminished is its beauty, in no way aged by so much time. For buildings suffer the same fate as men: they grow gray and lose their strength under the years, and their beauty withers. But in this fortress they bury the kings of the Medes and the Persians and the Parthians even to this day, and the man entrusted with its care is a Jewish priest, and this remains the practice down to the present day.

It is worth relating also what is most remarkable about this man, something one would marvel at on hearing it: for he was granted, as few men ever have been, both honor and glory from kings and from the people throughout his lifetime, and after his death he holds an everlasting memory. For the books he wrote and left behind are read among us still today, and from them we are convinced that Daniel spoke with God; for he did not simply go on prophesying future events, as the other prophets also did, but he even fixed the time at which these things would come to pass. And whereas the other prophets, when they foretold the harsher things, were resented by kings and people for it, Daniel was a prophet of good things to them, so that from the favorable character of his predictions he drew goodwill from everyone, while from their fulfillment he won, among the masses, both credit for truthfulness and a reputation for something divine besides. And in what he left in writing he made clear to us that the exactness and unfailing accuracy of his prophecy can be trusted:

for he says that when he was at Susa, the capital of Persia, and had gone out to the plain with his companions, an earthquake and a sudden convulsion of the earth occurred, and he was left alone, his friends having fled; he fell upon his face, thrown down onto his two hands, and then someone touched him and, as he lay there, told him to rise and to see what would happen to his countrymen after many generations. When he had risen, a great ram was shown to him, one that had sprouted many horns, the last of which was taller than the rest. Then, looking toward the west, he saw a he-goat carried through the air from that direction, which clashed with the ram and, striking with its horns, knocked it to the ground twice and trampled it. Then he saw the goat put forth from its forehead a very great horn, which, once it was broken off, gave rise to four horns turned toward each of the four winds. And from these he wrote that another, smaller horn also arose, which, as it grew, the God who was showing him these things told him would make war on his nation and destroy the city by force, and would throw into confusion the affairs of the temple and prevent the sacrifices from being offered for a period of one thousand two hundred and ninety-six days.

These things Daniel wrote that he saw in the plain at Susa, and God made clear to him the meaning of the vision as follows: the ram, he said, signified the kingdoms of the Medes and Persians, and the horns the kings who were to reign, and the last horn signified the last king; for this one would surpass all the others in wealth and glory. The goat signified that a certain king would arise from among the Greeks, who, joining battle with the Persian, would defeat him twice in battle and take over the whole empire. The great horn on the goat's forehead signified the first king, and the sprouting of the four horns after that one had fallen off, and their turning toward the four regions of the earth, signified that his successors would appear after the first king's death, each in one of these regions, and that the kingdom would be divided among them, though these were neither his sons nor his kinsmen, and that they would rule the inhabited world for many years. And from among these, he said, there would arise a certain king who would make war upon the nation and its laws, would take away their constitution based on these laws, would plunder the temple, and would prevent the sacrifices from being carried out for three years.

And indeed these very things our nation suffered at the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes, just as Daniel had seen and had written down many years beforehand that they would happen. In the same way Daniel also wrote concerning the empire of the Romans, and that it would be laid waste by them. All these things, once God had shown them to him, he wrote down and left behind, so that those who read them and observe how events turn out marvel at the honor Daniel received from God, and find from these very things that the Epicureans have gone astray, who cast providence out of life and refuse to hold that God oversees the affairs of the world, or that the universe is governed for its own preservation by that blessed and imperishable being, but say instead that the world, without a guide and without anyone caring for it, is carried along by chance.

But if the world were indeed unsteered in this way, then just as we see ships without pilots sunk by the winds, or chariots overturned when they have no one driving them, it too would long since have been shattered by uncontrolled disaster and destroyed and ruined. It seems to me, then, that those who declare that God exercises no providence at all over human affairs go badly astray from the true opinion, in the light of what was foretold by Daniel; for if the world were governed by mere chance, we would not have seen everything come to pass in accordance with his prophecy. As for myself, I have written of these matters just as I found them and read them; but if anyone wishes to judge them differently, let him hold his differing opinion without reproach from me.

← All of Josephus: The Complete Works