mand: see Prov. vi. 20. and vii. 1-3. where it is ordered to be hid, that is, secretly kept." Archbishop Secker. So Deschamps in his translation, or rather paraphrase, understands it; "tenons-nous à l'instrument authentique, mis en dépôt par ordre du Seigneur." If this be right, the 16th verse must be understood in the same manner.

Ibid. In which there is no obscurity], as an adjective, frequently signifies dark, obscure: and the noun signifies darkness, gloominess, Joel ii. 2. if we may judge by the context:

"A day of darkness and obscurity;

Of cloud, and of thick vapour;

As the gloom spread upon the mountains:

A people mighty and numerous;"

Where the gloom,, seems to be the same with the cloud and thick vapour, mentioned in the line preceding: see Lam. iv. 8. Job xxx. 30. See this meaning of the word well supported in Christ. Muller Satura Observationum Philolog. p. 53. Lugd. Bat. 1752. The morning seems to be an idea wholly incongruous in the passage of Joel. And in this of Isaiah, the words, "in which there is no morning" (for so it ought to be rendered, if in this place signifies, according to its usual sense, morning), seem to give no meaning at all. "It is because there is no light in them," says our translation: if there be any sense in these words, it is not the sense of the original; which cannot justly be so translated. Qui n'a rien d'obscur. Deschamps. The reading of LXX, and Syr. TL, gift, affords not any assistance towards the clearing up of this difficult place.

21. —distressed—] Instead of py, distressed, the Vulg. Chald, and Sym. manifestly read, stumbling, tottering through weakness, ready to fall; a sense which suits very well with the place.

22. And he shall cast his eyes upward—] The learned professor Michaelis, treating of this place, (Not. in de S. Poes. Hebr. Præl. ix.) refers to a passage in the Koran, which is similiar to it. As it is a very celebrated passage, and on many accounts remarkable, I shall give it here at large, with the same author's farther remarks upon it in another place of his writings. It must be noted here, that the learned professor renders

in this and the parallel place, chap. v. 30. which I translate he looketh, by it thundereth, from Schultens, Orig. Ling. Hebr. lib. i. chap. ii. of the justness of which rendering I much doubt. This brings the image of Isaiah more near, in one circumstance, to that of Mohammed, than it appears to be in my translation.

"Labid, contemporary with Mohammed, the last of the seven Arabian poets, who had the honour of having their poems, one of each, hung up in the entrance of the temple of Mecca, struck with the sublimity of a passage in the Koran, became a convert to Mohammedism; for he concluded, that no man could write in such a manner, unless he were divinely inspired.

"One must have a curiosity to examine a passage which had so great an effect upon Labid. It is, I must own, the finest that I know in the whole Koran: but I scarce think it will have a second time the like effect, so as to tempt any one of my readers to submit to circumcision. It is in the second chapter; where he is speaking of certain apostates from the

faith.

They are like,' saith he,' to a man who kindleth a light. As soon as it begins to shine, God takes from them the light, and leaves them in darkness, that they see nothing. They are deaf, dumb, and blind; and return not into the right way. Or they fare, as when a cloud, full of darkness, thunder, and lightning, covers the heaven: when it bursteth, they stop their ears with their fingers, with deadly fear; and God hath the unbelievers in his power. The lightning almost robbeth them of their eyes: as often as it flasheth, they go on by its light; and when it vanisheth in ' darkness, they stand still. If God pleased, they would retain neither hearing nor sight.' That the thought is beautiful, no one will deny and Labid, who had probably a mind to flatter Mohammed, was lucky in finding a passage in the Koran, so little abounding in poetical beauties, to which his conversion might with any propriety be ascribed. It was well that he went no farther; otherwise his taste for poetry might have made him again an infidel." Michaelis, Erpenii Arabische Grammatik abgekürzt, Vorrede, s. 32.

23. —accumulated darkness] Either, fem. to agree with; or, alluding perhaps to the palpable Egyptian darkness, Exod. x. 21.

Ibid. The land of Zebulon-] Zebulon, Naphthali, Manasseh, that is, the country of Galilee all round the sea of Genesareth, were the parts that principally suffered in the first Assyrian invasion under Tiglath Pileser: seo 2 Kings xv. 29. 1 Chron. v. 26. And they were the first that enjoyed the blessing of Christ's preaching the gospel, and exhibiting his miraculous works among them. See Mede's Works, p. 101. and 457.

CHAP. IX.

2. Thou hast increased their joy] Eleven MSS. (two ancient) read 15, according to the Masoretical correction.

.a MS בקציר For כשמחת בקציר [as with the joy of harvest

Ibid. has, and another : one of which seems to be the true reading, as the noun preceding is in regimine.

4. The greaves of the armed warrior] IND JIND. This word, occurring only in this place, is of very doubtful signification. Schindler fairly tells us, that we must guess at it by the context. The Jews have explained it, by guess I believe, as signifying battle, conflict: the Vulgate renders it violenta prædatio. But it seems as if something was rather meant which was capable of becoming fuel for the fire, together with the garments mentioned in the same sentence. In Syriac the word, as a noun, signifies a shoe, or a sandal, as a learned friend suggested to me some years ago: see Luke xv. 22. Acts xii. 8. I take it therefore to mean that part of the armour which covered the legs and feet, and I would render the two words in Latin by caliga caligati. The burning of the heaps of armour, gathered from the field of battle, as an offering made to the god supposed to be the giver of victory, was a custom that prevailed among some heathen nations; and the Romans used it as an emblem of peace: which perfectly well suits with the design of the prophet in this place. A medal, struck by Vespasian on finishing his wars both at home and abroad, represents the goddess Peace, holding an olive branch in one hand, and

with a lighted torch in the other setting fire to a heap of armour. Virgil

mentions the custom:

"Cum primam aciem Præneste sub ipsa

Stravi, scutorumque incendi victor acervos."

Eu. viii. 561.

See Addison on Medals, Series ii. 18. And there are notices of some such practice among the Israelites, and other nations of the most early times. God promises to Joshua victory over the kings of Canaan: "Tomorrow I will deliver them up all slain before Israel; thou shalt hough their horses, and burn their chariots with fire." Josh. xi. 6. See also Nahum ii. 13. And the Psalmist employs this image to express complete victory, and a perfect establishment of peace:

"He maketh wars to cease, even to the end of the land:
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
And burneth the chariots in the fire."

Psal. xlvi. 9.

by, properly plaustra, the baggage-waggons: which, however, the LXX and Vulg. render scuta, shields; and Chald. round shields, to shew the propriety of that sense of the word from the etymology; which, if admitted, makes the image the same with that used by the Romans.

Ezekiel, in his bold manner, has carried this image to a degree of amplification, which, I think, hardly any other of the Hebrew poets would have attempted. He describes the burning of the arms of the enemy, in consequence of the complete victory to be obtained by the Israelites over Gog and Magog:

"Behold, it is to come to pass, and it is done;

Saith the Lord JEHOVAH.

This is the day, of which I spake:

And the inhabitants of the cities of Israel shall go forth;

And shall set on fire the armour, and the shield,

And the buckler, and the bow, and the arrows,

And the clubs, and the lances;

And they shall set them on fire for seven years:
And they shall not bear wood from the field;
Neither shall they hew from the forest:
For of the armour shall they make their fires;
And they shall spoil their spoilerers,
And they shall plunder their plunderers."

Ezek. xxxix. 8-10.

5. The government shall be upon his shoulder.] That is, the ensign of government; the sceptre, the sword, the key, or the like, which was borne upon, or hung from the shoulder. See note on chap. xxii, 22.

Chap. ix. 7.-chap. x. 4.] This whole passage, reduced to its proper and entire form, and healed of the dislocation which it suffers by the absurd division of the chapters, makes a distinct prophecy, and a just poem; remarkable for the regularity of its disposition, and the elegance of its plan. It has no relation to the preceding or the following prophecy; though the parts, violently torn asunder, have been, on the one side and the other, patched on to them. Those relate principally to the kingdom of Judah; this is addressed exclusively to the kingdom of Israel. The subject of it is a denunciation of vengeance awaiting their crimes. It is divided into four parts, each threatening the particular punishment of some grievous offence: of their pride; of their perseverance in their vices; of their impiety; and of their injustice. To which is added a ge

neral denunciation of a farther reserve of divine wrath, contained in a distich, before used by the prophet on a like occasion, chap. v. 25. and here repeated after each part: this makes the intercalary verse of the poem, or, as we call it, the burden of the song.

"Post hoc comma (cap. x. 4.) interponitur spatium unius lineæ, in cod. 2 et 3.: idemque observatur in 245. in quo nullum est spatium ad finem capitis ix." Kennicott, Var. Lect.

7. JEHOVAH] For N, thirty MSS. and three editions read.

8. —carry themselves haughtily] WT), and they shall know: so ours, and the versions in general. But what is it that they shall know? The verb stands destitute of its object; and the sense is imperfect. The Chaldee is the only one, as far as I can find, that expresses it otherwise. He renders this verb in this place by 8), they exalt themselves, or carry themselves haughtily; the same word by which he renders ma, chap. iii. 16. He seems therefore in this place to have read ; which agrees perfectly well with what follows, and clears up the difficulty. Archbishop Secker conjectured 177, referring it to in the next verse; which shews, that he was not satisfied with the present reading. Houbigant reads WV, et pravi facti sunt; which is found in a MS.: but I prefer the reading of the Chaldee, which suits much better with the

context.

9. The bricks-] "The eastern bricks," says Sir John Chardin, (see Harmer, Observ. i. p. 176.) 66 are only clay well moistened with water, and mixed with straw, and dried in the sun." So that their walls are commonly no better than our mud-walls: see Maundrell, p. 124. That straw was a necessary part in the composition of this sort of bricks, to make the parts of the clay adhere together, appears from Exod. chap. v. These bricks are properly opposed to hewn stone, so greatly superior in beauty and durableness. The sycamores, which, as Jerom on the place says, are timber of little worth, with equal propriety are opposed to the cedars. "As the grain and texture of the sycamore is remarkably coarse and spongy, it could therefore stand in no competition at all (as it is observed, Isa. ix. 10.) with the cedar, for beauty and ornament." Shaw, Supplement to Travels, p. 96. We meet with the same opposition of cedars to sycamores, 1 Kings x. 27. where Solomon is said to have made silver as the stones, and cedars as the sycamores in the vale, for abundance. By this mashal, or figurative and sententious speech, they boast, that they shall easily be able to repair their present losses, suffered perhaps by the first Assyrian invasion under Tiglath Pileser; and to bring their affairs to a more flourishing condition than ever.

10.-the princes of Retsin against him] For, enemies, Houbigant, by conjecture reads, princes; which is confirmed by twenty-one MSS. (two ancient), and nine more have y upon a rasure, and therefore had probably at first. The princes of Retsin, the late ally of Israel; thrat is, the Syrians, expressly named in the next verse, shall now be excited against Israel.

The LXX in this place give us another variation; for, they read , opos uv, mount Sion; of which this may be the sense: but JEHOVAH shall set up the adversaries of mount Sion against him (i. e. against Israel), and will strengthen his enemies together: the Syrians—

the Philistines-who are called the adversaries of mount Sion. See Si

monis Lex. in voce.

11.-on every side], in every corner; in every part of their country, pursuing them to the remotest extremities, and the most retired parts. So the Chald., in every place.

13. in one day] Eight MSS. read □"; and another has a rasure in the place of the letter.

16. JEHOVAH] For, eighteen MSS. read'.

17. For wickedness-] Wickedness rageth like a fire, destroying and laying waste the nation: but it shall be its own destruction, by bringing down the fire of God's wrath, which shall burn up the briers and the thorns; that is, the wicked themselves. Briers and thorns are an image frequently applied in Scripture; when set on fire, to the rage of the wicked, violent, yet impotent, and of no long continuance: "They are extinct as the fire of thorns." Psal. cxviii. 12. to the wicked themselves, as useless and unprofitable, proper objects of God's wrath, to be burned up, or driven away by the wind: "As thorns cut up, they shall be consumed in the fire." Isa. xxxiii. 12. Both these ideas seem to be joined in Psal. Iviii. 9.

66

Before your pots shall feel the thorn,

As well the green as the dry, the tempest shall bear them away."

The green and the dry is a proverbial expression, meaning all sorts of them, good and bad, great and small, &c. So Ezekiel: "Behold, I will kindle a fire, and it shall devour every green tree, and every dry, tree." Chap. xx. 47. D'Herbelot quotes a Persian poet describing a pestilence under the image of a conflagration:“This was a lightning that, falling upon a forest, consumed there the green wood with the dry." See Harmer, Observ. ii. p. 187.

19. —the flesh of his neighbour] “ Του βραχιονος του αδελφου αυτου, LXX Alexand. Duplex versio, quarum altera legit, quæ vox extat Jer. vi. 21. Nam y, adeλøoç, Gen. xliii. 33. Recte, ni fallor." SECKER. I add to this excellent remark, that the Chaldee manifestly reads, not ; for he renders it by, his neighbour. And Jeremiah has the

And every one shall " ואיש בשר רעהו יאכלו :very same expression

eat the flesh of his neighbour." Chap. xix. 9. This observation, I think, gives the true treading and sense of this place: and the context strongly confirms it, by explaining the general idea by particular instances, in the following verse: Every man shall devour the flesh of his neighbour;" that is, they shall harass and destroy one another; "Manasseh shall devour Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh ;" which two tribes were most closely connected both in blood and situation, as brothers and neighbours; "and both of them in the midst of their own dissensions shall agree in preying upon Judah." The common reading, “shall devour the flesh of his own arm," in connexion with what follows, seems to make either an inconsistency, or an anticlimax; whereas by this correction the following verse becomes an elegant illustration of the foregoing.