1881.] ^Jl [Lesley, 



It is true the h here is the weak n f^-nc^ not the strong n; hut that is as 

 open to conjecture as all the rest. If it were Avritten •nn-lI^N' then we 

 have a genitive followed by ayu, as in the case of the name of the Sphinx 

 Hor-m-a^u. Or yu alone, would suggest the name of the Euhemerist 

 Pharaoh yy-n-aten. And the number of names in Egyptian and Hebrew 

 as well as in Sanscrit ending in U, is very remarkable, and deserves a 

 special investigation. It is noteworthy that the LXX hcuni'i.-q does not ex- 

 press the final u; as if the name as known to them was simply Jas'-Ja'. 

 "Jehovah heals." Again there seems no good reason for the transposition 

 of the elements of Josiah when compared with Joshua, which is written 

 with the ipji not after but hefore the verb, and yet is translated in exactly 

 the same way by the etymologists ' ' whom Jehovah saves. ' ' 



The fact seems to be that 1. We are quite ignorant of the genuine 

 original forms of such proper names ; 2. We are equally ignorant of the 

 correct meaning of their elements, even such as they have come to us by 

 tradition ; and 3. No sound canon of grammatical interdependence of 

 the elements has been established ; and that because exegetical etymolo- 

 gists have been content to study the names embodied in the literature of 

 one people quite apart from the names embodied in the literatures of other 

 nations. 



It is very doubtful if the name of the hebrew deity, Jehovah, is at all 

 represented in a multitude of proper names in the Old Testament for the 

 interpretation of which it has been taken for granted, merely on the 

 ground that they were or are supposed to have been hebrew names. 



JosiaJi is a flagrant instance of this uncertainty. 



The hebrew history of this monarch's reign is of the highest importance 

 to the student of that chronic war which raged in Palestine between the 

 Jehovah cultus and various other religious rites. His open, powerful 

 and persistent efforts to fix the national mind on one god, Jehovah, is 

 described as commencing in his 20th year (the 12th of his reign). The 

 chronicler says, that when he was only 16 years old, "while he was yet 

 young, he began to seek after the god of his fathers." This would imply 

 that before that he had been an idolater, like those around him. The 

 older historian says nothing of this, and nothing even of the terrible raid 

 which, in his 20th year, the chronicler reports him as making iipon the 

 high places of Judah and Israel. The older historian passes over all this 

 and commences his account with what Josiah did in his 26th year (18th 

 of his reign). Both accounts then agree in telling, almost in the same 

 words, how he sent Shaphan, the scribe, to Hilkiah, the priest, to take 

 account of the temple money oflTerings, and to apply them to the restora- 

 tion of the dilapidated edifice. 



Hilkiah told Shaphan that "he had found the book of the law in the 

 house of Jehovah." Shaphan read it ; and read it to Josiah, who rent 

 his clothes in dismay at its contents, and ordered Hilkiah, Ahikam, 

 Achbor and Shaphan to consult the oracle, "to inquire of Jehovah, for 



