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Verily they who believe, and those who Judaize, and the Sabeans, and the Christians, whoever of them believeth in God and the last day, and doth that which is right, there shall come no fear on them, neither shall they be grieved. We formerly accepted the covenant of the children of Israel, and sent apostles unto them.

One day, as Job's sons and daughters were eating and drinking in the oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were ploughing and the asses were grazing near them when Sabeans suddenly attacked and seized them; the servants were put to the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the merchandize of the Sabeans is particularly noticed by the prophet Isaiah; and even long before his time, we are informed, that there were no such spices as the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon.

The dark mansions of the Christians, Jews, Sabeans, Magians, and idolaters are sunk below each other with increasing horrors, in the order of their names. The seventh or lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites of every religion.

By his emissaries he incited the Sabeans, and they fell upon the oxen and the asses feeding beside them, slaying the servants with the edge of the sword, suffering one only to escape and this, not in any pity or sympathy, but that he might bear the message to his unhappy master, telling of the destruction of his property and servants.

Such a nation, and so abounding in superfluity, owes its independence to its distance from Europe; for their luxurious manners would soon render them a prey to the European sovereigns, who have always troops on foot prepared for any conquest; and who, if they could find the means of invasion, would soon reduce the Sabeans to the condition of their agents and factors; whereas they are now obliged to deal with them as principals."

Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God.

The great foreign wars with the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Sabeans, and the surrounding nations, who were more or less advanced in a knowledge of the arts and sciences, had the effect of widening the range of knowledge of Israel as a nation, and of stirring her up to an ambition to excel her neighbors in affairs of peace as well as in those of war.

The importance and the bearing of these curious facts, first brought to our notice by Agatharcides, as well as the inferences which may be drawn from them regarding the mode in which the ancients obtained their commodities of India, will call our particular attention afterwards: at present we shall merely notice the characteristic and minute picture which Agatharcides has drawn of the Sabeans, and the just notions he had formed on the nature of a commerce, of which all the other writers of antiquity seemed to have been utterly ignorant.

They are first mentioned by Agatharcides, who compares their wealth with that of the Sabeans, and describes them as the agents for all the precious commodities of Asia and Europe: he adds that they brought much wealth into Syria, and furnished a variety of articles, which were afterwards manufactured or resold by the Phoenicians.