CAMBYSES, the Son of Cyrus, succeeded his Father in the year of the world 3475, before the vulgar Æra 529. This Prince was violent, passionate, and cruel; he had sometimes fits of passion which proceeded to downright madness. We do not here take upon us to set down the History of his whole Life: It is sufficient to observe what may have a relation to the Scripture, and the Jewish History. As soon as he came to the Crown, the Samaritans, who in the reign of Cyrus never ventured to attack the Jews any otherwise than privately, and in an indirect manner, now set upon them directly and openly, and wrote to Ezra iv. 6.Cambyses, whom they call Ahasuerus, to follicit him, that he would forbid the Jews to carry on their works any farther in rebuilding of their Temple. What the motives were, which they made use of, we cannot tell; but it is certain, that Cambyses put a stop to the works, and for the remaining seven years and five months of his life, no one was employed upon this Edifice.
In the second year of his reign, he prepared to make war against Egypt. One of the King of Egypt’s Eunuchs, who betrayed his Master, and delivered up the bridges and avenues of the Country to Cambyses, made his entrance into Egypt, In the year of the world 3478, before the vulgar Æra 526.and the conquest of it easy to him. After five years continuance in this Country, he was obliged to leave it and return to Babylon, where the Magus Pathizites had placed his own Brother Smerdis on the throne of Persia, pretending that he was Smerdis the Brother of Cambyses. Cambyses was at Ecbatane in Palestine, at the foot of Mount Carmel, when news was brought him, that Smerdis had usurp’d the Empire. Whereupon in great transports of rage he mounted his horse with precipitation, and his sword by accident falling out of its scabbard wounded him in the thigh. Twenty days after, seeing himself to be near the point of death, he called the principal men of Persia about him, and told them, that he had put to death his Brother Smerdis, and that he who reigned was an Usurper. He exhorted them that they would not suffer his crime to go unpunished, and that they would hinder Smerdis from translating the Empire from the Persians to the Medes1. For Smerdis was by birth a Mede. After this he died at Ecbatane, as the Oracle had foretold; not at Ecbatane in Media, as he imagined, but at Ecbatane in Syria.
What Ezekiel says of the Wars of Gog and Magog against Israel, and the judgment which God was to exercise against the enemies of his people, we think may be referred to the time of Cambyses. And what the Prophets say of all those misfortunes which were to befal the Israelites after the return from their Captivity, is, probably, all applicable to this event. See for example, Joel ii. 30, 31. iii. 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 16. Isai. xli. 15, 16. Micah iv. 11, 12, 13. Lastly, some Authors2 refer the History of Judith to the time of Cambyses. The Reader may consult our Dissertation upon Gog and Magog, prefixed to Ezekiel.
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