15. —shalt slag you.] For, shall slay thee, LXX and Chald. read, shall slay you, plural. 17. I create new heavens, and a new earth] Concerning this image, and the application of it, see De S. Poes. Hebr. Præl. ix. 18. in the age to come, which 1 create] So in chap. ix. 5. TAN, πarηρ гov μεXXоvтog alwrog, LXX. See Bishop Chandler, Defence of Christianity, p. 136. 20. For DVD, thence, LXX, Syr. Vulg. read , there. 21. They shall not build, and another inhabit] The reverse of the curse denounced on the disobedient, Deut. xxviii. 30. "Thou shalt build a house, and thou shalt not dwell therein; thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof." 22. For as the days of a tree-] It is commonly supposed, that the oak, one of the most long-lived of the trees, lasts about a thousand years; being five hundred years growing to full perfection, and as many decaying: which seems to be a moderate and probable computation. See Evelyn, Sylya, b. iii. chap. iii. The present emperor of China, in his very ingenious and sensible poem, entitled, Eloge de Moukden, a translation of which in French was published at Paris, 1770, speaks of a tree in his country which lives more than a hundred ages; and of another which, after fourscore ages is only in its prime, p. 37, 38. But his imperial majesty's commentators, in their note on the place, carry the matter much farther; and quote authority which affirms, that the tree last mentioned by the emperor, the immortal tree, after having lived ten thousand years, is still only in its prime. I suspect that the Chinese enlarge somewhat in their national chronology, as well as in that of their trees. See Chou King, Preface, by Mons. de Guignes. The prophet's idea seems to be, that they shall live to the age of the antediluvians; which seems to be very justly expressed by the days of a tree, according to our notions. 23. My chosen shall not labour in vain] I remove from the end of the 22d to the beginning of the 23d verse, on the authority of LXX, Syr. Vulg. and a MS.; contrary to the division in the Masoretic text. Ibid. Neither shall they generate a short-lived race]nab, in festinationem, what shall soon hasten away. Eg karapav, for a curse, LXX. They seem to have read, Grotius. But Psal. lxxviii. 33. both justifies and explains the word here: ויכל בהבל ימיהם ושנותם בבחלה : "And he consumed their days in vanity; μɛra oróvdes, say the LXX. Jerom, on this place of Isaiah, explains it to the same purpose: “εç avvπaρžiav, hoc est, ut esse desistant.” 25. --shall feed together] For TN, as one, an ancient MS. has 7", together; the usual word, to the same sense, but very different in the letters. LXX, Syr. and Vulg. seem to agree with the MS. CHAP. LXVI. THIS chapter is a continuation of the subject of the foregoing. The Jews valued themselves much upon their temple, and the pompous system of services performed in it, which they supposed were to be of per petual duration; and they assumed great confidence and merit to themselves for their strict observance of all the externals of their religion. And at the very time, when the judgments, denounced in ver. 6th and 12th of the preceding chapter, were hanging over their heads, they were rebuilding, by Herod's munificence, the temple in a most magnificent manner. God admonishes them, that "the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands;" and that a mere external worship, how diligently soever attended, when accompanied with wicked and idolatrous practices in the worshippers, would never be accepted by him. This their hypocrisy is set forth in strong colours: which brings the prophet again to the subject of the former chapter; and he pursues it in a different manner, with more express declaration of the new economy, and of the flourishing state of the church under it. The increase of the church is to be sudden and astonishing. They that escape of the Jews, that is, that become converts to the Christian faith, are to be employed in the divine mission to the Gentiles, and are to act as priests in presenting the Gentiles as an offering to God: see Rom. xv. 16. And both, now collected into one body, shall be witnesses of the final perdition of the obstinate and irreclaimable. These two chapters manifestly relate to the calling of the Gentiles, the establishment of the Christian dispensation, and the reprobation of the apostate Jews, and their destruction executed by the Romans. 2.-all these things are mine] A word, absolutely necessary to the sense, is here lost out of the text: ", mine; it is preserved by LXX and Syr. 3. He that slayeth an ox, killeth a man-] These are instances of extreme wickedness joined with hypocrisy; of the most flagitious crimes committed by those, who at the same time affected great strictness in the performance of all the external services of religion. God, by the prophet Ezekiel, upbraids the Jews with the same practices: "When they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it." Chap. xxiii. 39. Of the same kind was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in our Saviour's time; "who devoured widows' houses, and for a pretence made long prayers." Matt. xxiii. 14. The generality of interpreters, by departing from the literal rendering of the text, have totally lost the true sense of it; and have substituted in its place what makes no good sense at all: for it is not easy to shew, how, in any circumstances, sacrifice and murder, the presenting of legal offerings and idolatrous worship, can possibly be of the same account in the sight of God. Ibid.—that maketh an oblation, [offereth] swine's blood] A word here likewise, necessary to complete the sense, is perhaps irrecoverably lost out of, the text. The Vulg. and Chald. add the word offereth, to make out the sense; not, as I imagine, from any different reading (for the word wanted seems to have been lost before the time of the oldest of them, as the LXX had it not in their copy); but from mere necessity. Le Clerc thinks, that is to be repeated from the beginning of this member; but that is not the case in the parallel members, which have another and a different verb in the second place.", sic versiones: putarem tamen legendum participium aliquod, et quidem ni, cum sequatur, nisi jam præcesserat." SECKER. Houbigant supplies , eateth. After all, I think the most probable word is that which Chald. and Vulg. seem to have designed to represent; that is, D. 5. Say ye to your brethren-] The Syr. reads ; and so the LXX, edit. Comp. eñare adeλpoiç vμwv⋅ and MS. Marchal. has adɛλpoic and so Cyril and Procopius read and explain it. It is not easy to make sense of the reading of LXX in the other editions: &ware adeλpos ἡμων τοις μισουσιν ύμας—but for ήμων, MS. 1. D. It. also has ύμων. 8. and who hath seen] Twenty MSS. (four ancient), and the two oldest editions, with two others, have, adding the conjunction: and so read all the ancient versions. 11. —from her abundant stores] For, two MSS., and the old edition of 1488, have ; and the latter is upon a rasure in three other MSS. It is remarkable that Kimchi and Sal. b. Melech, not being able to make any thing of the word as it stands in the text, say it means the same with : that is, in effect, they admit of a various reading, or an error, in the text. But as Vitringa observes, what sense is there in sucking nourishment from the splendour of her glory? He therefore endeavours to deduce another sense from the word ; but as far as it appears to me, without any authority. I am more inclined to accede to the opinion of those learned Rabbins, and to think that there is some mistake in the word; for that in truth is their opinion, though they disguise it by saying, that the corrupted word means the very same with that which they believe to be genuine. So in chap. xli. 24. they say, that YON, a viper, means the same with DDN, nothing; instead of acknowledging that one is written by mistake instead of the other. I would propose to read in this place, or (instead of *), from the stores; from, to nourish, to feed: see Gen. xlv. 23. 2 Chron. xi, 23. Psal. cxliv. 13. And this perhaps may be meant by Aquila, who renders the word by anо πаνтоdаπιαç: with which that of the Vulgate, “ab omnimoda gloria," and of Symmachus and Theodotion, nearly agree. The Chaldee follows a different reading, without improving the sense; ", from the wine. 12. —like the great river, and like the overflowing stream-] That is the Euphrates (it ought to have been pointed, ut fluvius ille, as the river), and the Nile. Ibid. And ye shall suck at the breast] These two words by, at the breast, seem to have been omitted in the present text, from their likeness to the two words following; Tyby, at the side. A very probable conjecture of Houbigant. Chald. and Vulg. have omitted the two latter words instead of the two former. See note on chap. Ix. 4. 15. —shall come as a fire] For UN, in fire, the LXX had in their copy WN, as a fire; wç ævρ. Ibid. To breathe forth his anger] Instead of, as pointed by the Masoretes, to render, I understand it as, to breathe, from T: . Syrians worshipped a god 17. —after the rites of Achad-] The called Adad. Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxvii. 11. held him to be the highest and greatest of the gods, and to be the same with Jupiter and the Sun: and the name Adad, says Macrobius, signifies one; as likewise does the word Achad in Isaiah. Many learned men therefore have supposed, and with some probability, that the pro phet means the same pretended deity., in the Syrian and Chaldean dialects is ; and perhaps by reduplication of the last letter, to express perfect unity, it may have become T, not improperly expressed in Latin by Macrobius Adad, without the aspirate. It was also pronounced by the Syrians themselves, with a weaker aspirate, T; as in Benhadad, Hadadezer, names of their kings, which were certainly taken from their chief object of worship. This seems to me to be a probable account of this name. But the Masoretes correct the text in this place; their marginal reading is, which is the same word, only in the feminine form: and so read thirty MSS. (six ancient), and the two oldest editions. This Le Clerc approves, and supposes it to mean Hecate, or the Moon; and he supports his hypothesis by arguments not at all improbable. See his note on the place. Whatever the particular mode of idolatry, which the prophet refers to, might be, the general sense of the place is perfectly clear. But Chald. and Syr. and after them Symmachus and Theodotion, cut off at once all these difficulties, by taking the word in its common meaning, not as a proper name; the two latter rendering the sentence thus: orlow aλληλων εν μεσω εσθιόντων το κρέας το χοιρειον one after another, in the midst of those that eat swine's flesh. I suppose, they all read in their -one after an אחד אחר אחד one by one, or perhaps אחד אחד copies other. See a large dissertation on this subject in Davidis Millii Dissertationes Selectæ, Dissert. vi. 18. For I know their deeds-] A word is here lost out of the present text, leaving the sense quite imperfect. The word is y, knowing, supplied from the Syriac. The Chald. had the same word in the copy before him, which he paraphrases by, their deeds are manifest before me: and the Aldine and Complutensian editions of LXX acknowledge the same word, εñoraμαι; which is verified by MS. Pachom. and the Arabic version. I think there can be little doubt of its being genuine. Ibid. And I come-] For 】, which will not accord with any thing in the sentence, I read, with a MS.; the participle answering to TI, with which agree LXX, Syr. Vulg. Perhaps it ought to be 2), Syr. quando veniam: and so LXX, according to edit. Ald. and Complut. and Cod. Marchal. 19. —who draw the bow] I much suspect, that the words up 'JUD, who draw the bow, are a corruption of the word T, Moschi, the name of a nation situated between the Euxine and Caspian seas; and properly joined with an, the Tibareni: see Bochart, Phaleg. iii. 12. The LXX have pooox, without any thing of the drawers of the bow: the word being once taken for a participle, the bow was added to make sense of it. up, the bow, is omitted in a MS. Ibid. —who never heard my name] For YD, my fame, I read with LXX and Syr. DW, my name. 20. —and in counes] There is a sort of vehicle, much used in the east, consisting of a pair of hampers or cradles, thrown across a camel's back, one on each side: in each of which a person is carried. They have a covering to defend them from the rain and the sun. Thevenot calls them counes, i. p. 356. Maillet describes them as covered cages hanging on both sides of a camel. "At Aleppo," says Dr. Russell, "women of inferior condition in longer journies are commonly stowed, one on each side of a mule, in a sort of covered cradles." Nat. Hist. of Aleppo, p. 89. These seem to be what the prophet means by the word D'ay. See Harmer, Observ. i. p. 445. 21. -and for Levites] For, fifty-nine MSS. (eight ancient) have, adding the conjunction 1, as the sense seems necessarily to require: and so read all the ancient versions. See Josh. iii. 3. and the various readings on that place in Kennicott's Bible. : 24. For their worm shall not die-] These words of the prophet are applied by our blessed Saviour, Mark ix. 44. to express the everlasting punishment of the wicked in Gehenna, or in hell. Gehenna, or the valley of Hinnom, was very near to Jerusalem to the south-east: it was the place where the idolatrous Jews celebrated that horrible rite of making their children pass through the fire, that is, of burning them in sacrifice, to Moloch. To put a stop to this abominable practice, Josiah defiled, or desecrated, the place, by filling it with human bones; 2 Kings xxiii. 10. 14. and probably it was the custom afterward to throw out the carcasses of animals there; and it became the common burying-place for the poorer people of Jerusalem. Our Saviour expressed the state of the blessed by sensible images; such as paradise, Abraham's bosom, or, which is the same thing, a place to recline next to Abraham at table in the kingdom of heaven; see Matt. viii. 11. ("Cænabat Nerva cum paucis. Veiento proximus, atque etiam in sinu recumbebat." Plin. Epist. iv. 22. Compare John xiii. 23.) for we could not possibly have any conception of it, but by analogy from worldly objects: in like manner he expressed the place of torment under the image of Gehenna; and the punishment of the wicked, by the worm which there preyed on the carcasses, and the fire which consumed the wretched victims. Marking, however, in the strongest manner, the difference between Gehenna and the invisible place of torment; namely, that in the former the suffering is transient: the worm itself, that preys on the body, dies; and the fire, which totally consumes it, is soon extinguished: whereas in the figurative Gehenna, the instruments of punishment shall be everlasting, and the suffering without end; for there "the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." These emblematical images, expressing heaven and hell, were in use among the Jews before our Saviour's time; and in using them he complied with their notions, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God," says the Jew to our Saviour, Luke xiv. 15. And in regard to Gehenna, the Chaldee paraphrast, as I observed before on chap. xxx. 33. renders everlasting, or continual burnings, by "the Gehenna of everlasting fire." And before his time the son of Sirach, vii. 17. had said, "The vengeance of the ungodly is fire and worms." So likewise the author of the book of Judith: "Woe to the nations rising up against my kindred: the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh:" chap. xvi. 17. manifestly referring to the same emblem. |