| Translation | Verse | Text |
| King James | Jon 3:6 | For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. |
| Word | American Tract Society - Definition |
| ASHES | To repent in sackcloth and ashes, or to lie down among ashes, was an external sign of self-affliction for sin, or of grief under misfortune. We find it adopted by Job, Job 2:8; by many Jews when in great fear, Es 4:3; and by the king of Nineveh, Jon 3:6. The ashes of a red heifer were used in ceremonial purification, Nu 19:1-22. |
| Word | Easton Dictionary - Definition |
| ASHES | The ashes of a red heifer burned entire (Num. 19:5) when sprinkled on the unclean made them ceremonially clean (Heb. 9:13). To cover the head with ashes was a token of self-abhorrence and humiliation (2 Sam. 13:19; Esther 4:3; Jer. 6:26, etc.). To feed on ashes (Isa. 44:20), means to seek that which will prove to be vain and unsatisfactory, and hence it denotes the unsatisfactory nature of idol-worship. (Comp. Hos. 12:1). |
| Word | Easton Dictionary - Definition |
| KING | is in Scripture very generally used to denote one invested with authority, whether extensive or limited. There were thirty-one kings in Canaan (Josh. 12:9, 24), whom Joshua subdued. Adonibezek subdued seventy kings (Judg. 1:7). In the New Testament the Roman emperor is spoken of as a king (1 Pet. 2:13, 17); and Herod Antipas, who was only a tetrarch, is also called a king (Matt. 14:9; Mark 6:22). This title is applied to God (1 Tim. 1:17), and to Christ, the Son of God (1 Tim. 6:15, 16; Matt. 27:11). The people of God are also called "kings" (Dan. 7:22, 27; Matt. 19:28; Rev. 1:6, etc.). Death is called the "king of terrors" (Job 18:14). Jehovah was the sole King of the Jewish nation (1 Sam. 8:7; Isa. 33:22). But there came a time in the history of that people when a king was demanded, that they might be like other nations (1 Sam. 8:5). The prophet Samuel remonstrated with them, but the people cried out, "Nay, but we will have a king over us." The misconduct of Samuel's sons was the immediate cause of this demand. The Hebrew kings did not rule in their own right, nor in name of the people who had chosen them, but partly as servants and partly as representatives of Jehovah, the true King of Israel (1 Sam. 10:1). The limits of the king's power were prescribed (1 Sam. 10:25). The officers of his court were, (1) the recorder or remembrancer (2 Sam. 8:16; 1 Kings 4:3); (2) the scribe (2 Sam. 8:17; 20:25); (3) the officer over the house, the chief steward (Isa. 22:15); (4) the "king's friend," a confidential companion (1 Kings 4:5); (5) the keeper of the wardrobe (2 Kings 22:14); (6) captain of the bodyguard (2 Sam. 20:23); (7) officers over the king's treasures, etc. (1 Chr. 27:25-31); (8) commander-in-chief of the army (1 Chr. 27:34); (9) the royal counsellor (1 Chr. 27:32; 2 Sam. 16:20-23). (For catalogue of kings of Israel and Judah see chronological table in Appendix.) |
| Word | American Tract Society - Definition |
| NINEVEH | Dwelling of Ninus, the metropolis of ancient Assyria, called by the Greeks and Romans "the great Ninus;" situated on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite and below the modern Mosul. Its origin is traced to the times near the flood. See NIMROD. For nearly fifteen centuries afterwards it is not mentioned. In the books of Jonah, and Nahum it is described as an immense city, three days' journey in circuit, containing more than one hundred and twenty thousand young children, or probably six hundred thousand souls. It contained "much cattle," and numerous parks, garden groves, etc. Its inhabitants were wealthy, warlike, and far advanced in civilization. It had numerous strongholds with gates and bars; and had multiplied its merchants above the stars: its crowned princes were as locusts, and its captains as grasshoppers. With this description agrees that of the historian Diodorus Siculus, who says Nineveh was twenty-one miles long, nine miles broad, and fifty-four miles in circumference; that its walls were a hundred feet high, and so broad that three chariots could drive upon them abreast; and that it had fifteen hundred towers, each two hundred feet high. Nineveh had long been the mistress of the East; but for her great luxury and wickedness, the prophet Jonah was sent, more than eight hundred years before Christ, to warn the Ninevites of her speedy destruction. See also Isa 14:24,25. Their timely repentance delayed for a time the fall of the city; but about 753 B. C., the period of the foundation of Rome, it was taken by the Medes under Arbaces; and nearly a century and a half later, according to the predictions of Nahum, Na 1:1-3:19, and Zep 2:13, it was a second time taken by Cyaraxes and Nabopolassar; after which it no more recovered its former splendor. Subsequent writers mention it but seldom, and as an unimportant place; so complete was its destruction, that for ages its site has been well-nigh lost, and infidels have even denied that the Nineveh of the Bible ever existed. The mounds which were the "grave" of its ruins, Na 1:14, were covered with soil as to seem like natural hills. But since 1841, Layard, Botta, and others have been exploring its remains, so long undisturbed. The mounds chiefly explored lie at three corners of a trapezium about eighteen miles long, and twelve miles wide, and nearly sixty in circumference, thus confirming the ancient accounts of its vast extent. The recent excavations disclose temples and palaces, guarded by huge winged bulls and lions with human heads. The apartments of these buildings are lined with slabs of stone, covered with sculptures in basrelief, and inscriptions in arrow-headed characters which have been in part deciphered; and these sculptured memorials of the history and customs of the Assyrians, together with the various articles made of glass, wood, ivory, and metals, now brought to light after a burial of twenty-four centuries, furnish invaluable aid in the interpretation of Scripture, and most signally confirm its truth. Our surprise is equal to our gratification, when we behold the actual Assyrian account of events recorded in Kings and Chraonicles. Not only do we find mention made of Jehu, Menehem, Hezekiah, Omri, Hazael, etc., and of various cities in Judea and Syria; but we discover Sennacherib's own account of his invasion of Palestine, and of the amount of tribute which king Hezekiah was forced to pay him; also pictures representing his capture of Lachish, 2Ki 18:14, and his officers, perhaps the railing Rabshakeh himself, presenting Jewish captives to the king, etc. (See cut and details in SENNACHERIB.) These mural tablets also furnish a graphic comment on the language of the prophet Ezekiel; and as he was a captive in the region of Ninveh, he had no doubt heard of, and had probably seen these very "chambers of imagery," as well as the objects they represent. We there find reproduced to our view the men and scenes he describes in Eze 23:6,14,15, etc.; Eze 26:7-12: "Captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously," "portrayed with vermilion," "girded with girdles upon their loins," "exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads." The "vermilion" or red color is quite prevalent among the various brilliant colors with which these tablets were painted, Eze 23:14,15. Here are "horsemen riding upon horses," "princes to look to" in respect to war-like vigor and courage; and their horses of high spirit, noble form, and attitudes, and decked with showy trappings. Here, in fine, are the idols, kings, and warriors of Nineveh, in various scenes of worship, hunting, and war; fortresses attacked and taken; prisoners led in triumph, impaled, flayed, and otherwise tortured; and sometimes actually held by cords attached to hooks which pierce the nose or the lips, 2Ki 19:28 Isa 37:29, and having their eyes put out by the point of a spear, 2Ki 25:7. For other cuts see NISROCH, SENNACHERIB, SHALMANEZER, and WAR. The Christian world is under great obligations to Layard and Botta for their enterprising explorations, and to Rawlinson and Hincks for their literary investigations of these remains. To the student of the Bible especially these buried treasures are of the highest value, and we may well rejoice not only in this new accumulation of evidence to the truth of the history and prophecies of Scripture, but in the additional light thus thrown on its meaning. How impressive too the warning which these newly found memorials of a city once so vast and powerful bring to us in these latter days and in lands then unknown, to beware of the luxury, pride, and ungodliness that caused her ruin. |
| Word | Easton Dictionary - Definition |
| NINEVEH | First mentioned in Gen. 10:11, which is rendered in the Revised Version, "He [i.e., Nimrod] went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh." It is not again noticed till the days of Jonah, when it is described (Jonah 3:3; 4:11) as a great and populous city, the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 19:36; Isa. 37:37). The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold (Nah.1:14; 3:19, etc.). Zephaniah also (2:13-15) predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital. From this time there is no mention of it in Scripture till it is named in gospel history (Matt. 12:41; Luke 11:32). This "exceeding great city" lay on the eastern or left bank of the river Tigris, along which it stretched for some 30 miles, having an average breadth of 10 miles or more from the river back toward the eastern hills. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins. Occupying a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from many sources, so that it became the greatest of all ancient cities. About B.C. 633 the Assyrian empire began to show signs of weakness, and Nineveh was attacked by the Medes, who subsequently, about B.C. 625, being joined by the Babylonians and Susianians, again attacked it, when it fell, and was razed to the ground. The Assyrian empire then came to an end, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its provinces between them. "After having ruled for more than six hundred years with hideous tyranny and violence, from the Caucasus and the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, and from beyond the Tigris to Asia Minor and Egypt, it vanished like a dream" (Nah. 2:6-11). Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. It was God's doing, his judgement on Assyria's pride (Isa. 10:5-19). Forty years ago our knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and of its magnificent capital was almost wholly a blank. Vague memories had indeed survived of its power and greatness, but very little was definitely known about it. Other cities which had perished, as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, had left ruins to mark their sites and tell of their former greatness; but of this city, imperial Nineveh, not a single vestige seemed to remain, and the very place on which it had stood was only matter of conjecture. In fulfilment of prophecy, God made "an utter end of the place." It became a "desolation." In the days of the Greek historian Herodotus, B.C. 400, it had become a thing of the past; and when Xenophon the historian passed the place in the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand," the very memory of its name had been lost. It was buried out of sight, and no one knew its grave. It is never again to rise from its ruins. At length, after being lost for more than two thousand years, the city was disentombed. A little more than forty years ago the French consul at Mosul began to search the vast mounds that lay along the opposite bank of the river. The Arabs whom he employed in these excavations, to their great surprise, came upon the ruins of a building at the mound of Khorsabad, which, on further exploration, turned out to be the royal palace of Sargon, one of the Assyrian kings. They found their way into its extensive courts and chambers, and brought forth form its hidded depths many wonderful sculptures and other relics of those ancient times. The work of exploration has been carried on almost continuously by M. Botta, Sir Henry Layard, George Smith, and others, in the mounds of Nebi-Yunus, Nimrud, Koyunjik, and Khorsabad, and a vast treasury of specimens of old Assyrian art has been exhumed. Palace after palace has been discovered, with their decorations and their sculptured slabs, revealing the life and manners of this ancient people, their arts of war and peace, the forms of their religion, the style of their architecture, and the magnificence of their monarchs. The streets of the city have been explored, the inscriptions on the bricks and tablets and sculptured figures have been read, and now the secrets of their history have been brought to light. One of the most remarkable of recent discoveries is that of the library of King Assur-bani-pal, or, as the Greek historians call him, Sardanapalos, the grandson of Sennacherib (q.v.). (See ASNAPPER.) This library consists of about ten thousand flat bricks or tablets, all written over with Assyrian characters. They contain a record of the history, the laws, and the religion of Assyria, of the greatest value. These strange clay leaves found in the royal library form the most valuable of all the treasuries of the literature of the old world. The library contains also old Accadian documents, which are the oldest extant documents in the world, dating as far back as probably about the time of Abraham. (See SARGON.) "The Assyrian royalty is, perhaps, the most luxurious of our century [reign of Assur-bani-pa]...Its victories and conquests, uninterrupted for one hundred years, have enriched it with the spoil of twenty peoples. Sargon has taken what remained to the Hittites; Sennacherib overcame Chaldea, and the treasures of Babylon were transferred to his coffers; Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal himself have pillaged Egypt and her great cities, Sais, Memphis, and Thebes of the hundred gates...Now foreign merchants flock into Nineveh, bringing with them the most valuable productions from all countries, gold and perfume from South Arabia and the Chaldean Sea, Egyptian linen and glass-work, carved enamels, goldsmiths' work, tin, silver, Phoenician purple; cedar wood from Lebanon, unassailable by worms; furs and iron from Asia Minor and Armenia" (Ancient Egypt and Assyria, by G. Maspero, page 271). The bas-reliefs, alabaster slabs, and sculptured monuments found in these recovered palaces serve in a remarkable manner to confirm the Old Testament history of the kings of Israel. The appearance of the ruins shows that the destruction of the city was due not only to the assailing foe but also to the flood and the fire, thus confirming the ancient prophecies concerning it. "The recent excavations," says Rawlinson, "have shown that fire was a great instrument in the destruction of the Nineveh palaces. Calcined alabaster, charred wood, and charcoal, colossal statues split through with heat, are met with in parts of the Nineveh mounds, and attest the veracity of prophecy." Nineveh in its glory was (Jonah 3:4) an "exceeding great city of three days' journey", i.e., probably in circuit. This would give a circumference of about 60 miles. At the four corners of an irregular quadrangle are the ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Karamless and Khorsabad. These four great masses of ruins, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as composing the whole ruins of Nineveh. |
| Word | Easton Dictionary - Definition |
| SACKCLOTH | cloth made of black goats' hair, coarse, rough, and thick, used for sacks, and also worn by mourners (Gen. 37:34; 42:25; 2 Sam. 3:31; Esther 4:1, 2; Ps. 30:11, etc.), and as a sign of repentance (Matt. 11:21). It was put upon animals by the people of Nineveh (Jonah 3:8). |
| Word | American Tract Society - Definition |
| THRONE | An established emblem of kingly dignity and power, used by sovereigns on all stale occasions. That of Solomon was of ivory, overlaid with gold; having six broad steps, every one guarded by a golden lion at each end, 1Ki 10:18-20. Heaven is called God's throne, and the earth his footstool, Isa 66:1. His throne is also sublimely described as everlasting, and as built upon justice and equity, Ps 45:6; 97:2. See also Isa 6:2-4; Eze 1:1- 28. Christ is on the throne forever, as the King of heaven, Ps 110:1; He 1:8; Re 3:21; and his faithful disciples will partake of his kingly glory, Lu 22:30; Re 4:4; 5:10. He forbade men lightly to swear by heaven or its throne, as they were thus irreverent to God, Mt 5:34; 23:22. |
| Word | Easton Dictionary - Definition |
| THRONE | (Heb. kiss'e), a royal chair or seat of dignity (Deut. 17:18; 2 Sam. 7:13; Ps. 45:6); an elevated seat with a canopy and hangings, which cover it. It denotes the seat of the high priest in 1 Sam. 1:9; 4:13, and of a provincial governor in Neh. 3:7 and Ps. 122:5. The throne of Solomon is described at length in 1 Kings 10:18-20. |
| Word | American Tract Society - Definition |
| WORD | One of the titles of the second person of the Trinity, indicating perhaps that by his acts and teachings God is revealed, somewhat as thought is by words, 1Jo 1:1 5:7 Re 19:13. "The word of the Lord" was a common phrase in the Old Testament, always denoting some revelation of Jehovah. Long before the coming of Christ, the Jewish paraphrasts of the Bible used "The Word" in the passage where Jehovah occurred in the original; and the term was familiar to Jewish writers as the name of a divine being, the Son of God. To show its true meaning and its application to our Savior, was of great importance to John, the last of the inspired writers, in whose later years certain errors as to the person of Christ, borrowed from Eastern philosophy, had begun to creep into the Christian church. He describes "The Word" as a personal and divine Being, self-existent, and coexistent from eternity with the Father, yet distinguished from him as The Son, the creator of all created things, the source of all life and light to men, and in the fullness of time incarnate among men, Joh 1:13,14. John's gospel is full and clear respecting the divinity of Christ, Joh 20:31. |
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