intercourse of his subjects with the Delta, and his natural anxiety to
avoid anything which might close one of the richest markets of the world
to the Tyrian trade, inclined him to receive favourably the overtures of
the Pharaoh: the emissaries of Shabitoku found him as much disposed
as Hezekiah himself to begin the struggle. The latter monarch, who
had ascended the throne while still very young, had at first shown no
ambition beyond the carrying out of religious reforms. His father Ahaz
had been far from orthodox, in spite of the influence exerted over him
by Isaiah. During his visit to Tiglath-pileser at Damascus (729 B.C.) he
had noticed an altar whose design pleased him. He sent a description
of it to the high priest Urijah, with orders to have a similar one
constructed, and erected in the court of the temple at Jerusalem: this
altar he appropriated to his personal use, and caused the priests to
minister at it, instead of at the old altar, which he relegated to an
inferior position. He also effected changes in the temple furniture,
which doubtless appeared to him old-fashioned in comparison with the
splendours of the Assyrian worship which he had witnessed, and he made
some alterations in the approaches to the temple, wishing, as far as we
can judge, that the King of Judah should henceforth, like his brother of
Nineveh, have a private, means of access to his national god.

This was but the least of his offences: for had he not offered his own
son as a holocaust at the moment he felt himself most menaced by the
league of Israel and Damascus? Among the people themselves there were
many faint-hearted and faithless, who, doubting the power of the God of
their forefathers, turned aside to the gods of the neighbouring nations,
and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any
other source; the worship of Jahveh was confounded with that of Moloch
in the valley of the children of Hinnom, where there was a sanctuary or
Tophet, at which the people celebrated the most horrible rites: a large
and fierce pyre was kept continually burning there, to consume the
children whose fathers brought them to offer in sacrifice.* Isaiah
complains bitterly of these unbelievers who profaned the land with their
idols, "worshipping the work of their own hands, that which their own
fingers had made."** The new king, obedient to the divine command,
renounced the errors of his father; he removed the fetishes with which
the sup