[448] Isa. vi. 13.
[449] The words "And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people" (Isa. vii. 8), are almost certainly an interpolation: for (1) the overthrow came within far less than sixty years; (2) the clause awkwardly breaks the context; (3) the "sixty years" is inconsistent with the promise (vii. 16) that it should be within very few years.
[450] Isa. vii. 1-25.
[451] Not improbably the water which afterwards flowed through Hezekiah's new tunnel between the Virgin's Tomb and the Pool of Siloam. It is referred to in 2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 30 (Isa. xxii. 9-11). See [Appendix II].
[452] This, if it be correct, can only mean that the son of Tabeal had a party in Jerusalem; but Hitzig renders it "dreadeth," not "rejoiceth in."
[453] The meaning is by no means clear.
[454] See Driver, Isaiah, p. 34.
[455] See 2 Kings xxiii. 11, which shows that this was not an innovation of Manasseh's. They were common in Persia. See Q. Curtius, iii. 3.
[456] 2 Kings xvii. 31; Ezek. xvi. 21, xxiii. 37, xxxiii. 6; Deut. xii. 31; Jer. xix. 5. See 2 Chron. xxviii. 3; for "his son," בְּנוֹ, it uses בָּנָיו "his sons," but perhaps generically. Moloch-worship may have been stimulated by accounts of the Assyrian fire-god Adrammelech (Movers, Phöniz., ii. 101). On this sacrifice of children to Moloch, which the Phœnicians referred back to the god El or Il, once King of Byblos, who in a crisis of danger sacrificed his eldest son Icond, see Plut., De Superst., § 13; Diod. Sic., xx. 12-14; 2 Kings iii. 27, xvi. 3, xxi. 6; Mic. vi. 7; Döllinger, Judenthum u. Heidenthum (E. T.), i. 427-429.
[457] This worship was to be punished by stoning (Lev. xviii. 21, xx. 2-5; Deut. xviii. 10). On the whole subject see Movers, Phöniz., 64; Jarchi on Jer. vii. 31; Euseb., Præp. Ev., iv. 16.