HKB
in a feast, and made the rest fly to their brethren in Parthia; and immediately after, in conjunction with Nebuchadnezzar, invaded and subverted the Kingdom of Assyria, and destroyed Nineveh.
In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which the Jews reckon to be the first of Nebuchadnezzar, dating his Reign from his being made King by his father, or from the month Nisan preceding, when the victors had newly shared the Empire of the Assyrians, and in prosecuting their victory were invading Syria and Phoenicia, and were ready to invade the nations round about; God [408] threatned that he would take all the families of the North, that is, the armies of the Medes, and Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, and bring them against Judæa and against the nations round about, and utterly destroy those nations, and make them an astonishment and lasting desolations, and cause them all to drink the wine-cup of his fury*; and in particular, he names *the Kings of Judah and Egypt, and those of Edom, and Moab, and Ammon, and Tyre, and Zidon, and the Isles of the Sea, and Arabia, and Zimri, and all the Kings of Elam, and all the Kings of the Medes, and all the Kings of the North, and the King of Sesac; and that after seventy years, he would also punish the King of Babylon. Here, in numbering the nations which should suffer, he omits the Assyrians as fallen already, and names the Kings of Elam or Persia, and Sesac or Susa, as distinct from those of the Medes and Babylonians; and therefore the Persians were not yet subdued by the Medes, nor the King of Susa by the Chaldæans; and as by the punishment of the King of Babylon he means the conquest of Babylon by the Medes; so by the punishment of the Medes he seems to mean the conquest of the Medes by Cyrus.
After this, in the beginning of the Reign of Zedekiah, that is, in the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar, God threatned that he would give the Kingdoms of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, and Tyre and Zidon, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and that all the nations should serve him, and his son, and his son's son until the very time of his land should come, and many nations and great Kings should serve themselves of him, Jer. xxvii. And at the same time God thus predicted the approaching conquest of the Persians by the Medes and their confederates: Behold, saith he, *I will break the bow of Elam_, the chief of their might: and upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them towards all those winds, and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come: for I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies, and before them that seek their life; and I will bring evil upon them, even my fierce anger, saith the Lord; and I will send the sword after them 'till I have consumed them; and I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence the King and the Princes, saith the Lord: but it shall come to pass in the latter days, _viz. in the Reign of Cyrus, that I will bring again the captivity of Elam_, saith the Lord. Jer. xlix. 35, &c. The *Persians_ were therefore hitherto a free nation under their own King, but soon after this were invaded, subdued, captivated, and dispersed into the nations round about, and continued in servitude until the Reign of Cyrus: and since the Medes and Chaldæans did not conquer the Persians 'till after the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar, it gives us occasion to enquire what that active warrior Cyaxeres was doing next after the taking of Nineveh.