Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/192

180 greatgrandson Josiah. This pious prince began to reign when he was eight years old, and in the twelfth year of his reign "he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images" (2 Chron. xxxiv. ver. 3). "And so did he in the cities of Manasseh and Ephraim and Simeon, even unto Naphthali, with their mattocks round about. And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem" (v. 6. 7). This was in the twelfth year of his reign, and the narrative proceeds, "Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan and others to repair the house of the Lord his God. And when they came to Hilkiah the high priest, they delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that kept the doors had gathered of the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and of all the remnant of Israel, and of all Judah and Benjamin."

In the same year Josiah kept another passover, like that ordained by Hezekiah; for it is said (chap. xxxv. ver. 18), "There was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem." Here then again we find the people of the ten tribes contradistinguished from those of Judah, specifically mentioned as joining in the worship of God, nearly 100 years after the Assyrian captivity, and acknowledging the king of Judah as their natural head. For we are told in sequence of his acts (2 Chron. xxxiv. ver. 33), "And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God. And all his days they departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers."

In the above-cited passages then, in addition to the tribes of Dan, Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher, Zebulon and Issachar, previously proved to have had a large remnant left in their own land after the Assyrian captivity, we have now two other tribes mentioned, Simeon and Naphthali, as in like manner not all carried away, the one being in the north-east extremity of Palestine, as the other was placed in the south-west. This one of Simeon, being in the south-west, was peculiarly far removed from the ravages of the Assyrians, who, coming from the north or north-east, fell undoubtedly