66 2 Samuel xxiv.; 1 Chronicles xxi. In this passage, contrary to his usual practice, the Chronicler has enlivened the dull tenor of his history with some picturesque touches which we miss in the corresponding passage of Kings. It is to him that we owe the vision of the Angel of the Plague first stretching out his sword over Jerusalem and then returning it to the scabbard. From him Defoe seems to have taken a hint in his account of the prodigies, real or imaginary, which heralded the outbreak of the Great Plague in London. “One time before the plague was begun, otherwise than as I have said in St. Giles’s, I think it was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her, which was an angel clothed in white with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head.... One saw one thing and one another. I looked as earnestly as the rest, but, perhaps, not with so much willingness to be imposed upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing but a white cloud, bright on one side, by the shining of the sun upon the other part.” See Daniel Defoe, _History of the Plague in London_ (Edinburgh, 1810, pp. 33 _sq._). It is the more likely that Defoe had here the Chronicler in mind, because a few pages earlier he introduces the prophet Jonah and a man out of Josephus with very good effect. M17 The rarity of references to the divinity of Hebrew kings in the historical books may be explained by the circumstances in which these works were composed or edited. 67 2 Kings xvii. 5 _sq._, xviii. 9 _sq._ 68 2 Kings xix. 32-36. 69 We owe to Ezekiel (xxiii. 5 _sq._, 12) the picture of the handsome Assyrian cavalrymen in their blue uniforms and gorgeous trappings. The prophet writes as if in his exile by the waters of Babylon he had seen the blue regiments filing past, in all the pomp of war, on their way to the front. M18 The historical books were composed or edited under the influence of the prophetic reformation. 70 Samaria fell in 722 B.C., during or just before the reign of Hezekiah: the Book of Deuteronomy, the cornerstone of king Josiah’s reformation, was produced in 621 B.C.; and Jerusalem fell in 586 B.C. The date of Hezekiah’s accession is a much-disputed point in the chronology of Judah. See the Introduction to Kings and Isaiah i.-xxxix. by J. Skinner and O. C. Whitehouse respectively, in _The Century Bible_.