is, however, to be observed, that in 2 Kings x. 26, 27, those pillars were directed to be both burnt and broken to pieces. In those last-mentioned verses our translators have incorrectly used the terms "image" and "images." NOTE 2. On the meaning of the word m translated "a grote," Deut. xvi. 21. There seems to be something incongruous in the command not to plant a grote of trees near an altar, seeing that this is an act that cannot easily be done. Rosenmüller renders the interdiction thus: "Ne erigas statuam idoli, omne lignum; i. e. ligneum, appositio, quam grammatici vocant, qua materia ex qua quid factum indicatur. 1 Reg. vii. 42." The term m occurs in Exod. xxxiv. 13, where Gesenius observes that it is the name of a Syrian goddess, probably the same with aty, plur. and Astartes; perhaps more commonly "images of idols." In confirmation of his opinion, he observes that the word occurs almost without exception in connexion with words which signify statue;" as, 25, njoe, jog, more, 7, and is placed among them (Exod. xxxiv. 13; Deut. vii. 5, &c.); that it is spoken of as an idol in 2 Kings xxi. 7; xxiii. 7. 15; 1 Kings xiv. 9. 15; xv. 13; 2 Chron. xv. 16; Judges vi. 25. 28. 30 ; and that, in several instances, it is joined to just as elsewhere and her, are joined. He accordingly comes to this conclusion, that the word refers to an idol, and that the idol is Astarte 2. 2 Gesen. in EN SECTION CLXV. DEUTERONOMY XXVIII. 1-6. 15-19. 49, TO THE END. TITLE. The history of the Holy Land and of the family of Abraham, is the key to unlock the whole mystery of the Providence which governs the world. Not only are general blessings promised to the obedience of the Jews, and general curses denounced against their disobedience, but the peculiar points of their history are foretold, the miseries of the sieges of Jerusalem by the Chaldæans and the Romans, and their present dispersion. The exile of the Jews from Judæa was the consequence of their rejecting a spiritual Messiah. The sight of a Jew is an evidence of the past, the present, and the future fulfilment of all the prophecies. The prophecies relating to the future state will all be accomplished. INTRODUCTION.-All history is divided into ancient and modern. Ancient History may be said to end with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, when the power of the Roman Empire was at its height. And Modern History may be said to begin with the commencement of the decline of the Roman power, and to be still in progress. But whatever date we assign either to the beginning or the end of the various stages of the whole records of the world, they are all distinguished by one remarkable identification of their narratives with the circumstances of one small territory, and one peculiar people. Before authentic profane history begins, a thousand years before Rome was founded, or before Greece had emerged from obscurity, the country of Abraham, and the family of Abraham, engage the attention of the civilized world. Two thousand years after Greece was a despised province, and Rome had fallen under her barbarian invaders, Canaan and the Jews are still the subjects of regard. Egypt and Persia, Rome and the Crusaders, are rendered more interesting by their con nexion with the annals of Judæa; and the Holy Land, the central point between the three continents, and the most appropriate place to be, as it once was, the metropolis of the world, is like an estate waiting for its owners. Those owners wander over the world with their title-deeds in their hands, anticipating their restoration. These title-deeds are the prophecies in the Revelation of God; and all the movements, agitations, and convulsions, which are even now disturbing the world, will, we believe, terminate in that restoration. The Section before us demonstrates that the chief portion of the prophecies respecting them has been already fulfilled. Their present condition is an actual miracle, as it is the continued accomplishment of the predictions which declare that they should never cease to exist as wanderers among the nations, though not of them; and the past and the present fulfilment of these prophecies may be received as the pledge and earnest of the future fulfilment of those that remain, and of the re-establishment of the sons of Abraham in the land of the God of their fathers, as sons and servants of their fathers' God. If any event could add to the wonders of the prophecies which thus relate to the scattered tribes of Israel, it would be the time and circumstances under which the chief of those prophecies were uttered. The present Section gives us the history of the people from the commencement of their political greatness to that one most remarkable fact which set the seal to their utter degradation after that political greatness had been destroyed, and with which their present wanderings began: and of all the wonderful predictions in the wonderful Book of God, this is, perhaps, the most striking. Moses had now brought the people out of Egypt, and through the waste and sterile wilderness. They were now in sight of the promised land. Before he dies he relates the blessings that shall follow their obedience, and the curses that shall follow their disobedience. Moses had been educated in the luxury of the court of Egypt as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He had even refused the sovereignty of Egypt for their sakes. When he first became acquainted with Israel as His own people, he found them slaves in Egypt. Their slavery, however, was of that lighter kind, that their national polity, and national union under their chiefs and heads, were both alike permitted. He now concludes his enumeration of the judgments that should befal them, with the declaration, that, slaves as they had been in Egypt, they should become still worse slaves; that their national polity and national union under their chiefs and heads should be destroyed; for they should be again brought into Egypt as captives, and there be sold as bondmen and bondwomen in such numbers, that buyers would not be found for them. This is the last verse of the Section. Moses begins their history from their present prospects after they had left the land of their slavery. He goes through their whole history, and details their sufferings after they shall have disobeyed; and he concludes the whole detail with an assurance that they shall return to the very land from which they had now escaped, in a worse state of slavery than the former. All, all has been punctually fulfilled! Let us very briefly proceed through the detail, comparing throughout the parallel passages of Leviticus xxvi. "If thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God," he begins', "God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth." This was accomplished in the reigns of David and Solomon, when the commerce of the world flowed into Judæa, the most central point, as future ages shall confess, for the commerce of the world again. The victories of David over the surrounding nations made the nation of Israel more powerful than any of the contemporary kingdoms. Then follows a general description of the prosperity which should attend their obedience,-that they should prosper in the commerce and wealth of their cities, in the abundance of their harvests and their fields, in the welfare of their families, and in all the employments and occupations of life'. He then contrasts with these general blessings the more general curses of adversity and penury, of failure and sorrow, of disease and misery, which should follow their disobedience. After these more general threatenings Moses is instructed to detail those more peculiar calamities which have made the history of the Jews so wonderful above all other national records. They begin thus: "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth'." He then goes on to describe that nation; and his description will apply to the Chaldæans, who came from far, but more especially to the Romans, who brought with them, to the siege of Jerusalem, British, as well as other troops, from the remotest regions of the West. This, however, is not the most wonderful part of the prophecy. The declaration that their God would bring from the end of the earth the nation that should conquer and destroy them, involved the promise that they should never be conquered by any of their fierce and idolatrous neighbours. The remnant of Edom and Amalek, and Ammon and Moab, with the Philistines, and them that dwell in Tyre, might be gathered against them, as the allies of their more powerful enemies; but the prediction of Moses implied that none of their neighbours, not even the warlike Canaanite, should be able to subjugate them. The enemy who was to lay waste Judæa, and capture Jerusalem, was to come from the remotest regions; and till that event took place, the land of their fathers should remain their possessed inheritance. The prophet then goes on to describe the Roman forces in language which is accurately expressive of the peculiarities which ever distinguished them. He alludes to their fierceness of countenance, to the swiftness of their marches, to the Jews' ignorance of their language, which had so little affinity with the Semitic or Aramaic dialects; to the cruelties-the indiscriminating cruelties— they should practise against the old and the young, to the ravages they should commit, and to the destruction of their flocks and property under their unsparing ferocity. He relates with so much brevity, though with so much minuteness, the events of the several sieges of their cities and towns, and the horrors that followed the siege and capture of Jerusalem by Titus, that his mournful but burning language might be almost called, reverently speaking, the miraculous 1 Deut. xxviii. 1. Levit. xxvi. 3. 3 Deut. xxviii. 15-65. Levit. xxvi. 14-37. 2 Deut. xxviii. 2-6. 5 Deut. xxviii. 49-51. index to the more copious relations of the subsequent Josephus. The results of the fearful famine in Jerusalem, that "the tender and delicate woman should secretly eat her own child," in the absence of other food, the same event which took place in the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, is related as if in anticipation of the narrative of Josephus'. Before he goes on to mention their present condition, he alludes to the cause of these punishments,—that they should only come upon them if they did not fear the Lord their God. If they ceased to fear God, then, and then only, they should thus suffer; then, and then only, the plagues of which he had not spoken (ver. 61), as well as all that had been now spoken and written, should come upon them, till they should be plucked away from the land of their fathers, and scattered, as our own eyes behold, from one end of the earth to the other. And he then describes the agony of heart, the contempt, the trembling, the sorrow, and the long catalogue of calamities which have hitherto, down to our own day, marked their wanderings, and which are now only beginning to be removed, as the dawning of the era, when the times of the Gentiles, we may hope, are beginning to be fulfilled'. Such is the summary of the Section before us; and it teaches us these three lessons :— First, that as, at the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, this ritual Law of Moses was observed to the letter, while the spirit of the Law, in rejecting the spiritual meaning of it, had been forgotten, so it is that no outward observances of external worship can please God, or avert the wrath of the Almighty from the soul of man, unless the heart be given to the Creator and Father of man, in love to Christ, and in the fear of God. The second lesson we learn from this Section is, that the very sight of one of the sons of Israel should ever be to us a proof of the truth of the Bible. And the third is, that if the prophecies of God are, and have been thus evidently and undeniably fulfilled, in the present world, those also which relate to the condition of the souls of believers and unbelievers in the future state will be no less certainly accomplished. These prophecies detail the miseries of hell, and the felicities of heaven. One or other of these will be our portion, according as we reject, or accept, the Gospel of the Son of God. CHRIST 1451. • Exod. 15. Lev. 26. 3. DEUTERONOMY XXVIII. 1—6. с thou ver. 15. the Zech. 1. 6. thy BEFORE 1 And it shall come to| 2 And all these bless- b ch. 26. 19. 3 d d Ps. 128. 1, 4. e Gen. 39. 5. f ver. 11. & 49. 25. ch. 7. 13. Blessed shalt thou Gen. 22. 17. the city, and blessed thou be in the Ps. 107. 38. & e 127. 3. & 128. 3. Prov. 10. 22. 4 Blessed shall be the 1 Tim. 4. 8. 7 Deut. xxviii. 52-57. 15 ¶ But it shall come shalt thou be in the Lev. 26. 14. to pass, hif thou wilt not field. Lam. 2. 17. hearken unto the voice of 17 Cursed shall be thy observe to do all his com- 18 Cursed shall be the i ver. 2. Jer. 5. 15. & 6. 22. 23. & 49. 22. DEUTERONOMY XXVIII. 49, TO The end. trough # Ps. 121. & 49 The LORD shall siege thee in all thy gates, Luke 19. 43. bring a nation against thee until thy high and fenced from far, from the end walls come down, wherein Jer. 48. 40. of the earth, m as swift as thou trustedst, throughout Lam. 4 19. the eagle flieth; a nation all thy land: and he shall Ezek. 17. 3, whose tongue thou shalt besiege thee in all thy not understand; gates throughout all thy 50 A nation of fierce land, which the LORD thy Prov. 7. 13. countenance," which shall God hath given thee. Eccles. 8. 1. not regard the person of 53 And thou shalt eat Lev. 26. 29, 2 Chron. 36. the old, nor shew favour the fruit of thine own 12. Hos. 8. 1. + Heb. hear. + Heb. strong of face. Dan. 8. 23. 17. Isai. 47. 6. ⚫ ver. 33. Isai. 1. 7. & 62. 8. P 2 Kings 25. 1, 2, 4. young: 2 Kings 6,23, 29. Jer. 19. 9. 4.10. ↑ Heb. belly, to the 54 So that the man that 15.9. 52 And he shall be- and toward the wife of ch. 13. 6. |