raelites,]
and Jacob [or the Israelites] should be Esau's [or the Edomites'] lord,
remarkably fulfilled. See Antiq. B. VIII. ch 7. sect. 6; Genesis 25;9,3;
and the notes on Antiq. B. I. ch. 18. sect. 5, 6.

[13] That a talent of gold was about seven pounds weight, see the
description of the temple ch. 13. Nor could Josephus well estimate it
higher, since he here says that David wore it on his head perpetually.

[14] Whether Josephus saw the words of our copies, 2 Samuel 12:31, and
1 Chronicles 20:3, that David put the inhabitants, or at least the
garrison of Rabbah, and of the other Ammonite cities, which he besieged
and took, under, or cut them with saws, and under, or with harrows of
iron, and under, or with axes of iron, and made them pass through the
brick-kiln, is not here directly expressed. If he saw them, as is
most probable he did, he certainly expounded them of tormenting these
Ammonites to death, who were none of those seven nations of Canaan whose
wickedness had rendered them incapable of mercy; otherwise I should
be inclinable to think that the meaning, at least as the words are in
Samuel, might only be this: That they were made the lowest slaves, to
work in sawing of timber or stone, in harrowing the fields, in hewing
timber, in making and burning bricks, and the like hard services, but
without taking away their lives. We never elsewhere, that I remember,
meet with such methods of cruelty in putting men to death in all the
Bible, or in any other ancient history whatsoever; nor do the words in
Samuel seem naturally to refer to any such thing.

[15] Of this weight of Absalom's hair, how in twenty or thirty years
it might well amount to two hundred shekels, or to somewhat above six
pounds avoirdupois, see the Literal Accomplishment of Prophecies, p. 77,
78. But a late very judicious author thinks that the LXXX. meant not its
weight, but its value, Was twenty shekels.--Dr. Wall's Critical Notes
on the Old Testament, upon 2 Samuel 14:26. It does not appear what was
Josephus's opinion: he sets the text down honestly as he found it in his
copies, only he thought that "at the end of days," when Absalom polled
or weighed his hair, was once a week.

[16] This is one of the best corrections that Josephus's copy affords
us of a text that in our ordinary copies is grossly corrupted. They say
that this rebellion of Absalom was forty years after what went before,
[of his reconciliation to his father,] whereas the seri