[557] LXX., ἡ σκοπία. Jer. xli. 5-9. Into this well Ishmael flung the corpses of the murdered adherents of Gedaliah.
[558] Renan, Hist. du Peuple Israel, ii. 248. Comp. Rephaiah.
[559] 2 Chron. xv. 1-15.
[560] 2 Chron. xvi. 9, 10.
[561] Following the precedent set by Rehoboam, he established his six younger sons in castles and fenced cities. Athaliah must have found it difficult to exterminate their families if she attempted this.
[562] The Nitzab or Præfect of Edom was allowed the barren title of king.
[563] 2 Chron. xx. 37. His name faintly recalls that of Eleazar, son of Dodo (2 Sam. xxiii. 9). Dodavahu means "friend of God."
[564] 2 Chron. xx. 36, 37. It would be monstrous to send ships to circumnavigate Africa in order to reach Tartessus. The last resource of the harmonists (e.g., Keil) to save the accuracy of the chronicler is to suppose that Jehoshaphat meant to drag the whole fleet across the Isthmus of Suez, and so to sail from one of the havens of Palestine!
[565] "Cette version," says Munk (Palestine, p. 314), "a probablement pris naissance dans l'esprit de rigorisme qui animait plus tard les écrivans Juifs." "This," says Dr. Robertson Smith, "is a mere pragmatical inference from the story in Kings." See his further remarks in The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, chap. ii., p. 146. He regards parts of the Books of Chronicles as being, in fact, a Jewish Midrash. "It is not History, but Haggada, moralising romance. And the chronicler himself gives the name of Midrash (R.V., 'story') to two of the sources from which he drew (2 Chron. xiii. 22, xxiv. 27), so that there is really no mystery as to the nature of the work when it departs from the old canonical histories" (p. 148).
[566] We shall have further glimpses of Jehoshaphat in the reigns of Ahab and even of Jehoram.