Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/315

 CHRONICLE.] it perpetual desolations." And in another place, when the fifth writing to the captivity which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon with King Jechoniah, he says: "After 70 years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, and bring you back to this place, saith the Lord." Again, it is thus recorded in the Chronicles, concerning the same period: "He that escaped from the sword was 2 chron. carried to Babylon, where he served the king and his sons until the time of the reign of the king of the Persians: to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths. For all the days that she lay desolate she kept sabbath, until 70 years were fulfilled. But in the first year of Cyrus, king of the Persians, that the word of the Lord, which He had spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of the Persians, etc." From which it appears, that when the Chaldseans spoiled Judsea, they did not introduce other colonists, as the Assyrians did to Samaria, but left the land desolate till the Jews themselves returned thither after 70 years. With this agrees Josephus, who, in the tenth book of his Antiquities, writes that the temple, and Jerusalem, and all Judæa remained desolate 70 years; and again, in enumerating the kings of Babylon, (if, indeed, he really so wrote, and the manuscript be not corrupted,) he says, that nearly 100 years intervened between the overthrow of Jerusalem and that of the kingdom of the Chaldseans. For he writes that, after Nebuchadnezzar, who, according to Holy Scripture, lived 25 years after the overthrow of Jerusalem, his son Evilmerodach reigned 18 years: that next to him his son Neriglissar reigned 40 years, and was succeeded by his son Labor osoarchod, who reigned 9 months; on whose death the kingdom passed to Belshazzar, surnamed Nabonadius; that after he had reigned 18 years, Babylon was taken by  Cyrus king of the Persians, and