in the
composition of the Priestly Code. I shall have occasion to
return briefly to the subject at the close of Volume IX.

** The date is supplied by the opening passage of the
prophecy of Jeremiah, "to whom the word of Jehovah came in
the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, King of Judah, in the
thirteenth year of his reign" (i. 2). Volney recognised
that chaps, i., iv., v., and vi. of Jeremiah refer to the
Scythian invasion, and since his time it has been admitted
that, with the exception of certain interpolations in chaps,
i. and iii., the whole of the first six chapters date from
this period, but that they underwent slight modifications in
the recension which was made in the fourth year of
Jehoiachin in order to make them applicable to the
threatened Chaldaean invasion. The date is important, since
by using it as a basis we can approximately restore the
chronology of the whole period. If we assume the thirteenth
year of Josiah to have been 627-626 B.C., we are compelled
to place all the early Medic wars in the reign of Assur-
bani-pal, as I have done.

This barbarian invasion, which burst upon the peace of Assyria like
a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky, restored to the faithful that
confidence in the omnipotence of their God which had seemed about
to fail them; when they beheld the downfall of states, the sack of
provinces innumerable, whole provinces in flames and whole peoples
irresistibly swept away to death or slavery, they began to ask
themselves whether these were not signs of the divine wrath, indicating
that the day of Jahveh was at hand. Prophets arose to announce
the approaching judgment, among the rest a certain Zephaniah, a
great-grandson of Hezekiah:* "I will utterly consume all things from off
the face of the ground, saith Jahveh. I will consume man and beast; I
will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the
stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from the face
of the earth, saith Jahveh. And I will stretch out My hand upon Judah,
and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the
remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarim with the
priests; and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops;
and them that worship, which swear to Jahveh and swear by Malcham; and
them that are turned back from following Jahveh; and those tha