say, “Thou hast covered thyself with a thick cloud so that our prayer cannot pass through.” His companion too derided him. “God has forsaken us for ever; we are now without a priest, and without a king, and without a sacrifice: all prayer is vain, from this second captivity there can be no return.” Adonijah’s heart was softening from its hardness, and, pierced with a sense of his sins, he poured forth a flood of tears. Josadec, sullen and immovable as marble, turned contemptuously away, nor did he again address himself to his unfortunate companion. That evening both received their sentence: Josadec was doomed to combat with wild beasts in the arena; Adonijah was condemned to fight with one of his own countrymen in the Circus Maximus. Josadec received the intelligence with sullen apathy; Adonijah, with indignation. Raising his hand towards heaven, he swore by the Almighty name of God to suffer the severest tortures rather than aim a hostile blow at a son of Israel. Dearer than life at that moment seemed the captive children of his people; dearer in their degradation and misery than when he was free and pursuing the flying legions of Cestius Galius, flushed with victory, and believing that he was fighting the battles of the Lord. ----- [15] See Appendix, Note VIII. [16] See Appendix, Note IX. [17] See Appendix, Note X. CHAPTER XVIII. “The dying Other from the gloom she drew, Supported on his shorten’d arm he leans, Prone agonizing; with incumbent fate, Heavy declines his head; yet dark beneath The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers, Shame, indignation, unaccomplish’d rage, And still the cheated eye expects his fall.” THOMSON. The fatal morning dawned refulgently over the metropolis of the world, but the eyes of the Hebrew captives shrank from before its beams, loathing the light, and vainly wishing for its decline. A hundred days of festivity had been decreed by the emperor to the Roman people, in which the children of Israel were to be torn in pieces by wild beasts, or compelled to slay each other,[18] to gratify the barbarous tastes of those who held them in chains. Adonijah and his opponent were included in the latter combats, as persons to whom no mercy would be shown. Both were still in the flower of youth, in the glory of their strength, who were thus brought forth to die.