144 The Rev. Dr. AVall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



but surely it was equally so, whether we suppose, with Herodotus, that the 

 nations from which the besiegers were principally drawn, had but one common 

 sovereign, or with Xenophon, that they then were ruled by two in alliance with 

 each other. The distinct character of the Medes and Persians is no more 

 destroyed by the supposition of their being under the sway of a single monarch, 

 than that of the besieging armies is, by their being under a single general, on 

 which latter point both historians are agreed. Scripture, therefore, leaves the 

 question entirely open, as to which writer Is more to be relied on, when they 

 differ; but certainly it gives strong support to both of their accounts of the 

 taking of Babylon, by the remarkable accordance with circumstances predicted 

 by the prophets which each account exhibits. 



Indeed it was quite impossible that the main facts of so eventful a life as that 

 of Cyrus, — except such as were less creditable to him, and which national vanity 

 very soon interfered to distort, — could have been wholly altered or forgotten in 

 the space of 1 30 years, even by a people who had no more durable mode of pre- 

 serving the memory of them than oral tradition. Accordingly we find our two 

 historians agreeing on many prominent points ; they both make the father of this 

 remarkable man, a Persian named Cambyses ; and his mother, the daughter of 

 Astyages, King of the Medes ; according to both, he conquers Croesus, seizes his 

 kingdom, and spares his life ; according to both, he takes Babylon by the strata- 

 gem of making outlets for the river which ran through it, thereby suddenly 

 drawing off the waters, and thus gaining an admission for his troops into the 

 town by night through the dried channel. In these particulars, and perhaps in 

 some more in which Herodotus and Xenophon agree, the truth of their respec- 



to not only the Hebrew text, as it now stands, but also the Septuagint version, ventured to attach a 

 passive sense to the verbs in the first part of the prophecy, in order to shift the application of it from 

 Cyrus to the Babylonian king. Thus Bishop Lowth has construed the sentence in question. " The 

 plunderer is plundered, and the destroyer is destroyed." And William Lowth, though by a diffe- 

 rent but very forced translation, has virtually given the same meaning of the sentence. To justify such 

 an alteration, the Waw in the words of the original, "T2 and IT tlJ, should be transferred from the 

 first to the second syllable of each ; and I admit that before the Hebrew text was vocalized, these 

 words might be read in either way. But where the early vocalizers, the Masorets, and the Greek 

 translators, have all agreed in limiting the sense to that indicated by the present reading, the case 

 should be very strong indeed, which would warrant our changing it in opposition to iheir combined 

 (luthoritirs. 



