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The author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, and holds with historians who accept the Phoenicians as the sufficiently remote founders of Seville. This does not put out of commission those Biblical "ships of Tarshish" which Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in his graphic sketch of Spanish history, has sailing to and from the neighboring coasts.
Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his arms three gourds, argent, upon a field vert; and with these were carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. It was now the eldest of the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities.
In the year 332 B.C. the siege and destruction of Tyre, predicted five hundred years before by Isaiah, was accomplished by Alexander the Great, and the words of the prophet found their complete fulfillment that the people of Tarshish should find no city, no port, no welcome, when they came back to Syria!
The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them. Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations.
But still more interesting is it from its being in all probability the Tarshish visited by the ships of Solomon. They were built, we are told, at Ezion-geber, on the shores of the Red Sea. The rowers coasted along the shores of Arabia and the Persian Gulf, headed by an east wind.
And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
We need not suppose that Jonah thought that he could actually get away from God's presence. Possibly he believed in a special presence of God in the land of Israel, or, more probably, the phrase means to escape from service. At any rate, he determined to do his flight thoroughly. Tarshish was, to a Hebrew, at the other end of the world from Nineveh.
But the appointment lay in the hands of the Board of Longitude, of which certain clergymen were members; and whether these worthy ecclesiastics feared that Priestley's presence among the ship's company might expose His Majesty's sloop Resolution to the fate which aforetime befell a certain ship that went from Joppa to Tarshish; or whether they were alarmed lest a Socinian should undermine that piety which, in the days of Commodore Trunnion, so strikingly characterised sailors, does not appear; but, at any rate, they objected to Priestley "on account of his religious principles," and appointed the two Forsters, whose "religious principles," if they had been known to these well-meaning but not far-sighted persons, would probably have surprised them.
"For the King's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram; every three years once came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks." 2 Chronicles VIII. 21.
And having bowed themselves down first, as was most fit, offering themselves, they made offering of their treasure, as it had been written in ancient times, "The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring presents, and the kings of Sheba shall offer gifts." And what were these gifts?
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