300 BATTLES OF THE BIBLE.

Grandfather. There are very few, only two or three
hundred people: like the J ews, they worship in the
synagogue every Sabbath day.

George. I have been expecting a battle. It is long in
coming to-night.

Grandfather. We have come now to war. In the
fourteenth year of Hezekiah, son of Ahaz and king of
Judah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against
him, and took the walled towns. Hezekiah, in great
fear, sent to offer to pay anything the king of Assyria
might ask. Sennacherib demanded three hundred talents
of silver, and thirty talents of gold, which is nearly two
hundred thousand pounds in our money. To raise this
large sum Hezekiah was obliged not only to take all the
treasure out of the temple, but even to take the gold
plates off the doors and the pillars.

Marianne. Then Hezekiah had been a bad man, when
he stripped the temple of its gold.

Grandfather. He was not a bad man. He was one
of the best kings that ever reigned in Judah. He purged
the land of idolatry, and caused all the people to come
up to Jerusalem to worship. The character given of him
by the sacred historian is this—« He trusted in the Lord
God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among
all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him,
for he clave to the Lord, and departed not from follow-
ing Him, but kept His commandments which the Lord
commanded Moses.”

Marianne. Why then did he take the gold and silver