Annotations on Passages of the Bible: Old Testament

The following is the title-page of the Bible from whence these “Notes “are drawn: —” Verbum Dei. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old Testament and the New; Newly translated out of the origiuall Tongue; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised: London: Printed by the Companie of Stationers. 1652. Cor mundum circa in me Deus, Psalm 51.” 4to. On a flyleaf there is the signature of a former possessor of the Bible, thus: “Benjamin Pierpont, His Book AD: 1728.” This was probably a son of the Rev. James Pierpont of New Haven, New England, whose third wife, Mary, grand-daughter of the famous Thomas Hooker, was mother of the wife of Jonathan Edwards. Of “Benjamin “himself nothing seems to be known. Immediately underneath the other is,” Jonathan Edwards his Book 1748.” Mr Pierpont records, on the reverse of the title-page, that the interleaving paper consisted of “-432 leaves,” and the volume itself of “396 leaves.” He has also interspersed a few commonplace observations. Edwards’s heading for his Notes” is, “Miscellaneous Observations ou the Holy Scriptures.” — G.

OLD TESTAMENT.

GENESIS.

1. Gen. ii. 3 — “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it,” &c.] It is rendered very probable by Bedford in his “Scripture Chronology,”* that this first Sabbath being the first day of Adam’s .life, and so the first day from whence he began to reckon time, was the first day of his week; and so, that the first day of the week was the day that God sanctified to be kept by all nations and ages, excepting the change that was made of the day of the Sabbath for the Israelitish nation after the coming out of Egypt, till the resurrection of Christ; and also that the “deep sleep” that was fallen on Adam in which God took from him one of his ribs and made Eve of it, was on the night before. If so, then as Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week, so Adam on the same day rose from his first sleep. As Christ on that day rose from that death that He died, by which He purchased and obtained the Church, being by that means created anew; so Adam rose froju that “deep sleep” that he slept, which made way for her formation, and by which he obtained her. As when Adam arose from his deep sleep, God brought the woman to him, whose being, his deep sleep had made way for, and gave her to him; so when Christ rose from the dead, God brought the Church to Him: it was gathered and brought home to Christ in an extraordinary manner, soon after His resurrection. As Adam rose and received his wife, “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh,” and taken out of himself, from near his heart; so Christ received His Church that is “of his flesh and of his bones,” (Eph. v. ‘SO,) and as the product of His most dear dying love. As this day w’as a day wherein God was refreshed, and rejoiced in beholding His works, and a day of rejoicing to Adam in that he then received his wife, and a day of rejoicing to Eve, being then first received into union with her companion; so the day of Christ’s resurrection was a day of rejoicing to God the Father, to Christ, and also to the Church, which was then begotten again to a living hope by the resurrection.

‘2. Gen. ii. 17 — ‘In the day,” &c.J It does not seem to mo ’ 17 oO folio. — fJ.

necessary that we should understand this, that death should be executed upon him in that day when he ate. But that it may be understood in the same manner as Solomon’s words to Shimei, (1 Kings ii. 37.) Death was executed upon Shimei many days after he had done that thing. The thing that God would signify to Adam by this exyression seems to me to be, that if he but once presumed to taste that fruit, he should die. You shall not be waited upon to see whether you will do it again, but as soon as ever you have eaten, that very day shall death be made sure to you, you shall be bound to die, given over to death without any more waiting upon you; as that was what Solomon would signify to Shimei; that if he but once went over the brook Kedron, he should die; (see note on 1 Kings ii. 37,) and so these words signify that perfect obedience was the condition of God’s covenant that was made with Adam, as they signify that for one act of disobedience he should die. See Ezek. xxxiii. 12 — [” Thou shalt die.”] (See Pool, Synop. in loc.) *

3. Gen iii. 15 — “1 will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,”] Here the pronoun “he,” the verb “bruise,” and the affix “his” are all of the singular nmnber, as Bedford observes in p. 166 of his “Scripture Chronology,” f which shews that by “seed” is meant a particular person, and not her posterity, in general; which observation is agreeable to that which the apostle Paul makes, (Gal. iii. 16,) referring to what is said in Gen. xxii. 17, 18, where the singular pronoun or affix “his,” and the singular verb “possess,” is in like manner used when speaking of that “seed of Abraham,” who should “possess the gate of his enemies,” and “in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed.” Bedford in his “Scripture Chronology” says the Jewish Paraphrasts express this text thus: “There shall be a remedy to mankind: but there shall be no remedy to thee the serpent. But there shall be a remedy to them in the latter age of the world, even in the days of King Messiah, who shall remember what thou didst in the beginning of the world;” and says, that Maimonides, a learned Jew, justly admires [:= wonders] that the seed of the woman should be only mentioned, and not of Adam, without whom she could have no seed, and which must therefore be his seed; and that it should be said of “Jier seed,” not of “his,” that it bruised the serpent’s head. “This,” saith he, “is one of the passages in Scripture which is most wonderful, and not to be understood according to the letter, but contains great wisdom in it.” In the old Creation, the woman was taken out of the man; in the new Creation, the man is taken out of the woman. God in the new creation honours the inferior; as man, the inferior nature, is honoured above the angels.

4. Gen. iii. 21 — “Coats of skins.”] Our first parents, who were l)CCome nalied, were clothed at the expense of life. Beasts were slain,

* The well-known “Synopsis Criticormn,” filling five large folios. Best edition is, Utrecht, 1684. — G.

t As before under Gen. ii. 3. — G.

and rcsio;iiecl up their lives to afford them clothing to cover their nakedness. The skin signifies the life, as in Job ii. 4 — “Skin for skin” — i.e., life for life. These beasts typified Jesus Christ. Probably they were beasts slain in sacrifice; but if not, if they were slain by God on purpose to clothe Adam and Eve, the type is no less lively. See Exod. xxxvi. 14-.

o. Gen. iv. 2*>, ‘2 — “And Lamech said unto his wives, Adali and Zilhih, here my voice; ye wives of Lamech,.. I have slain a man,” &c.] The probable desijrn of the Holy Spirit in relating this, is to shew the great increase of the depravity and corruption of the world of Cain’s posterity, and those that adhered to them at that day, in the generation next to the Flood. This is shewn in the particular instance of Lamech, the chief man of Cain’s posterity in his day. Lamech had been guilty of murder, he had slain some man that he had had a quarrel with, and he justifies himself in it, and endeavours to satisfy his wives that he shall escape with impunity, from the instance of Cain, whose life God had protected, and even took especial care that no man should kill him; and had declared if any man killed him, vengeance should be taken on him sevenfold, though the man he slew was his brother and a righteous man, and had done him no injury. But this man he had slain in, or for his wounding, (as the words are interpreted by some learned men, (see Pool, Synop. in loc.) See instance Joshua xxiv. 32, n’’’tt’p rih?Q2 for an hmidred pieces of silver,) — i.e.. the man he had slain had injured and wounded him; and therefore if Cain should be avenged sevenfold, doubtless he seventy and sevenfold. By this speech to his wives he shews his impenitence, presumption, and great insensibility. When Cain had slain his brother, his conscience greatly troubled him; but Lamech, with great obduracy, shakes off all remorse, and as it were bids defiance to all fear and trouble about the matter. That he should set the price of his life so high; that he should imagine that the vengeance due to the man that should take it away ought to be so vastly beyond that which was threatened for the killing of Cain, must be owing to a prodigious pride of heart, esteeming himself a man of such great value, and accounting it so heinous a thing for any to hurt or wound him; and then it shews a vile abuse of God’s goodness, long-suffering, and forbearance, in the instance of Cain, which ought to have led men to repentance. But instead of this, that instance of God’s forbearance probably was so abused as to be one great occasion of that violence that the earth was filled with in Lamech’s days. The sins for which the old world was destroyed were chiefly sensuality, pride, violence, presumption, a stupid, seared conscience, and abusing God’s patience, of each of which Lamech (the head of that wicked world) is here set forth [as] an example, in his polygamy and his murder, (which probably was some way occasioned by his polygamy,) and in this speech to his wives about what he had done. It need not be wondered at that Lamech should express his mind to his wives any more than that Ahab and Haman should express the wicked workings of their hearts to their wives, [1 Kings xxi. 5, G; Eph. v. 10-1 4< ;] and it is the less to be wondered at in Lamecli’s case, for it is natural to suppose that his wives, knowing what he had done, were full of fear lest the friends of the persons murdered would avenge themselves on him and his family, and that they themselves should lose their lives by the means; which would be more natural still if the quarrel he had had with the young man that was slain, was about his wives, as is probable. This may well account for the earnestness of Lamech’s speech to his wives, as we may well suppose it would require some pains to remove their fears in such a case.

C. Gen. iv. 25 — “Hath appointed me,” &c.] Eve does not say, God hath appointed us another seed, but hath appointed me. She speaks of Abel and Seth, the righteous children of Adam and Eve, as her seed; and so the Church, or generation of the righteous which was to proceed from Seth, she calls her seed, doubtless with respect to the promise, (chap. iii. 15.)

7. Gen. iv. 26 — “And to Seth, to him also,” &c.] The right translation probably is, “Then began men to call by the name of the Lord,” or “in the name of the Lord,” — i.e., then they began to call themselves and their children by or in His name, signifying that then the people of God, — of whom Seth was the principal man, and, as it were, their head leader and chief priest, being with his posterity appointed another seed (seed or generation of God) instead of Abel, — I say, then the people of God, openly to distinguish themselves from the wicked apostate world of the posterity of Cain and those that joined with them, began to appear in a visibly distinct society, being called the children of God, when the others were called the children of men. The children and posterity were looked upon as being in the name of the father and upholding his name. See Numb, xxvii. 4; Deut. ix. 14, xxv. 7; 1 Sam. xxiv. 21; 2 Sam. xiv. 7, xviii. 18; Ruth iv. 5; Job xviii. 17; Isa. xiv. 22; Gen. xlviii. 16, compared with Numb. vi. 27. On the birth of Enos, it probably first began to be a custom for parents openly to dedicate their children to God and call them by His name, and, as it were, insert them into His name by bringing them to the place of public worship, the transaction being performed by the parents’ solemn declaration and covenant, attended with prayer and sacrifice. See Pool, Synop. in he.

8. Gen. v. 20 — “Shall comfort us.”] How Noah would comfort the Church of God, we may be led to understand by the manner in which the like expression is used in Ezek. xiv. 22.

9. Gen. v. 24 — “Enoch walked,” &c.] That Enoch and Elias were translated, shews that it is not because the redemption of Christ was not sufficient, that the saints are not wholly freed from death, so as never to taste it. God saw fit that there should be these instances of it, probably partly for this end, to manifest this. If all mankind had died without one exception, it would have been ready to lead us to think it absolutely necessary that the justice or truth of God required, and that these didn’t allow of one being redeemed from it; and that the redemption of Christ in that point failed of sufiiciency.

What is absolutely UDiversnl, we are ready to look upon as absolutely necessary; and the translation of these saints is the more credible, because at the end of the world all the saints that are found living when Christ comes, shall be translated without dying. If all shall be translated, why not one or two before i

10. Gen. vii. 2, 3 — “Of clean beasts and clean fowls by sevens.”] Three couples for breed [ing,] and the seventh for sacrifice, (chap, viii. 20,) as in the distribution of the days of the week. See Henry in loc.

11. Gen. ix. 12-14.] Such a promise of God that He would no more destroy the earth by a flood of waters, and such a token of this covenant, was very necessary for the comfort of Noah and his sons, after they had been so terrified by such an awful dispensation of God. For probably before the Flood they had never seen any such thick clouds and such showers of rain as are common since. The air and fluids of the earth being then so much purer, as not to be disposed thus to such thick and dark condensing of vapours. God’s way of watering the ground seems to be that mentioned in Gen. ii. 6, of causing a mist to go up and descend in gentle dews. The rainbow here seems to be a new thing, which it would not have been if there had been such clouds and showers before the Flood as since. Noah and his sons, therefore, would have been likely to have been put into a terrible consternation from time to time, when they saw the heavens all covered with thick and dark clouds, and the water descending in great showers of rain, for fear the world was going to be drowned again with a flood; but God having told Noah, as in these verses, their seeing the rainbow, as was common after showers, especially great showers, would be a great comfort to them. That beautiful pleasant appearance, the rainbow, was a token of the covenant. So God’s covenant with His people is represented by the staff called beauty in Zech. xi. 10.

12. Gen. xii. 14 — “Forever.”] Such a phrase sometimes signifies no longer than “till the year of jubilee;” so Exod. xxi. 6. But if this phrase is linuted by the year of jubilee, which came at the end of every fifty years, no wonder that it should be spoken of as what should be continued for ever, which was to last to the end of the ages of that dispensation, till the coming of Christ, and the introduction of the glorious gospel-day, the great thing typified by the jubilee. There were some ordinances which were only for one particular time; so were several in the XIFii chapter of Exodus, .such as eating the jjaschal lamb with their staff in their hand, &c., and their .sprinkling the blood on the door-posts. Many ordinances were only occasional precepts to be observed on the occasion of God’s appearance at Mount Sinai, and the occasion of buildhig the tabernacle, the occasion of setting apart the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron, consecrating the tabernacle, altar, &c. The occasion of the destruction of Korah and his company; the occa.sion of their being plagued with fiery serpents; the occasion of their passing through Jordan; the occasion of the siege of Jericho, &c. Some ordinances were in force only during their continuing in the wilderness, as the ordinances concerning their encampments and marches, their gathering and disposing of the manna, their bringing all the beasts they killed to eat to the door of the tabernacle, &c. It is in contradistinction to these that the ordinances that were to be continued throughout the ages of their dispensation and of the Jewish state in Canaan, are called perpetual or everlasting statutes; and in this view, and as compared with those transitory and temporary statutes, they might well be so called.

13. Gen. xiv. 5, 6.] Thus God is pleased to honour His servant Abraham. First, He orders that in Providence, that shews the great strength of the enemy, by giving the victory over so many people and those that were so mighty. They subdue the race of the giants that were in these lands; and then He gives them an easy prey to Abraham and his family, His little flock, and shews that the weakness of God is stronger than the greatest strength of men, when hand joins in hand and mighty princes are combined together. Abraham takes them in their greatest glory, and just after they had taken their richest prize, that which they took from that wealthy country of the plain of Sodom. In their highest jjride and exaltation and triumph, they are suddenly brought down as Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were. Thus God often deals with man. There seems to be a special hand of God with them to enable them to conquer those giants from the favour He bore to His servants Abraham and Lot, and to evacuate those countries of them that He designed to give to their posterity for a possession. See Dent. ii. 18, 19, &c. They gave not God the glory of this great victory, but took it to themselves, as Nebuchadnezzar did the building of Babylon; therefore God destroyed them. That race of giants that were in and about Canaan, was probably the only race of giants upon earth. God had long war with them, and they were all destroyed; for the sake of His people, the race was entirely extirpated. They seemed to have been raised up for that end, that they might be types of the devils, and that their being destroyed before His people, might be a type of the victory Christ obtains over the devils for the sake of His people. See Josh. x.

14. Gen. xv. 1.] In what, God says to Abraham, He has respect to what is related in the foregoing chapter. There, it is related how wonderfully God had protected him from his enemies, and given him the victory over them; and therefore God on this occasion bids Abraham not to “fear,” and tells him that He is his shield. In the preceding chapter it is also related how that Abraham had refused the reward that the King of Sodom had offered him; and therefore God here tells him that He is his exceeding great reward, which He was sufficient for, being the possessor of heaven and earth, as Abraham on that occasion observed, in verses 19th and 22d of foregoing chapter.

15. Gen. xvii. 12 — “And he that is eight days old,” &c.] One reason why they were not to be circumcised till they were eight days old, was because the child was legally impure till then. It was born iiupurc, beino; defiled with blood, and it was seven days before it was clean; both the mother and child were unclean seven days on that account, they being both defiled with that blood, as Levit. xii. 2, 3.

IG. Gen. xvii. li — “That soul shall be cut off from his people.”] This and other parallel texts in the Law of Moses are not necessarily to be understood of death. It is very agreeable to the use of such expressions elsewhere, that he that is excomnmiucated, deprived, either by the judgment of ecclesiastical judges or by the immediate judgment of God, of all union or communion with the congregation or Cimrch of God’s people, should be said to be cut off from His people and cut off from the congregation of the Lord. Joshua says to the Gibeonites, Joshua ix. 23.... In the original it is “There shall not be cut off from you a bondsman.” (The word “cut off” in the original being the same as in the other case) — i.e., no one of you shall be separated from the rest of your company, so as not to partake with him or have communion with him in servitude. So God says, Num. iv. 18 — i.e., let them not be separated from them and from a participation in their privileges. Here, again, the word in the original is the same: as it also is Zech. iv. 2, where it is implied that not only those that are dead, but those who are separated from the inhabitants and benefits of the city by captivity, are cut off from the city. So divorcement in Scripture is “cutting off,” the word being from the same root in the original, (Deut. xxiv. 1, 3; Isa. 1. 1.) However, God’s de- ]iriving His people of cimrch privileges, or of the privileges of His visible people, is compared to this very thing.

17. Gen. xviii. 18, 19.] By these verses it is manifest —

(1.) That absolute promises already made may yet, in a sort, depend on future conditions; for the promise here mentioned had been made already absolutely over and over. But yet Abraham’s future commanding his children and his household after him, is mentioned as the condition of it; and then after that [there] remains another condition — viz., that they keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment.

(2.) That the promise is absolutely made before the performance of all the conditions, because the performance of the future conditions is so certainly connected with what was already found in Abraham, that it was certainly consequent, and taken as already fulfilled. This my illustrate the dependence of a sinner’s salvation on his future universal obedience and perseverance, though it be already absolutely promised.

(3.) Hereby it is manifest that, ordinarily, a thorough care and endeavour in the education of children will be successful.

(4.) That when God admits children into covenant with their parents, and so admits them to be the subjects of the visible seal of the Covenant, it is, as it were, on a dependence on the future religion and piety of the children, as so ordinarily consequent on it that it may be looked upon as virtually included in it.

] 8. Gen. xix. 1 — “And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom.”] Where he probably sat exhorting and reproving the people; for the gate of

E the city seems of old to be the place of resort on all public occasions, not only the place the judges sat to judge the people, but where their teachers sat to instruct and reprove them, (Isa. xxix. 21; Amos v. 10.) The judges might properly do this, but others might also do it who did not take upon themselves the office of judges. If Lot was now reproving the people, and striving to persuade them to repent and reform, he thus [shewed that he] had “no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” but rather reproved them; and God rewarded his withstanding and resisting the stream of the general wickedness of that people, by sending angels on a most kind and merciful errand to him, while in the exercise of his fortitude and opposition; and it is observable that just before the destruction of the people, God used extraordinary means to reclaim them by Lot’s reproofs, (who was a preacher of righteousness as well as Noah, 2 Pet. ii. 5-9,) and their destruction came upon them just on the manifestation of the highest and most desperate degree of obstinacy in them, in their despising his reproofs, and most horrid wickedness towards Lot and the angels immediately after. Lot having lately been reproving the people in the gate, the place of judgment, made them the more ready to say, as they do in ver. 9 — “this fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge.”

19. Gen. xxii. 8 — “God will provide Himself a lamb.”] Fulfilled in Christ. We may observe here an instance of the harmony between the Old and New Testaments, in that it is according to the Old Testament, as well as in that it is not unreasonable, that God Himself should provide the sacrifice by which sins against Himself should be atoned for, and His own angev eased. Abraham did not only tell his son that God would pr imself, but He actually did provide a ram for Abraham, t( up as a burnt-offering. Again, we may observe here that wh’ lay confirm us, that the prophecies of the prophets often, accorc .^ to the mind of the Holy Ghost, had respect to those things which the prophets themselves had no thought of. For Abraham, when he said “God will provide Himself a lamb,” had no thought of any other than that Isaac was to be the lamb that was to be offered and that God had provided for Himself. See John xi. 51.

20. Gen. xxiv. ] 2.] Abraham’s servant obtained a wife for his master’s son, not merely by delivering his message, but by prayer joined with it. So the ministers of Christ win souls, not only by preaching, but by earnest prayer to God for their conversion.

2L Gen. xxvi. 5.] If God had such respect to Abraham’s righteousness and obedience, and particularly to his offering up his son in obedience to God, as to give the earthly Canaan to his seed, much more will God have such a respect to the righteousness of Christ, and His offering up Himself in obedience to God, as for the sake of this to give His seed the heavenly Canaan.

22. Gen. xxvii. 4.] It was probably the manner, in those days, for parents, when they grew old and expected to die in a little time, to make a feast and to eat and drink with their children, when they gave them their blessing and their dying charges, and so did, as it were, make their Will. Their dying testament, or blessing, was something like a Covenant; but it was the manner of those, when they made a Covenant with any, to make a feast and eat and drink together, (chap. xxvi. 30, xxxi. 4(i.) When they gave their children the blessing, they then, as it were, took their leave of them. And when near friends took their leave one of another, they were wont to eat and drink together. So Eebekah’s friends took their leave of her, ((en. xxxiv. o-i.) So did the Levite’s father-in-law take leave of him and his daughter, the Levite’s wife, in Judges xix. So God, when He makes His testament or covenant ith us, doth it, as it were, at a feast. Of old, when the people entered into solemn covenant with God, they were wont to make a feast and feasted before the Lord; and almost all solenmities were attended with feasting. The Patriarchs thus blessing their children before their death, exhibits to us a proof of the covenant of grace, which is, as it were, Christ’s Last Will and Testament to His people.

23. Gen. xxviii. 11, 12.] There seems to be a double representation in this story. It seems to be a type that has respect to two things.

(1.) By Jacob sleeping and having heaven opened to him, and God appearing in heaven as his covenant-God, and the angels of God a.scending and descending on him, seems to be represented Christ, which is confirmed by what Christ says, (John i. 51,) in which Christ plainly alludes to what is said here in ver. 12; and Jacob’s sleep here, seems to represent the death of Christ. As Jacob in his sleep has the gate of heaven opened and a ladder set on the earth, on the land of Canaan, whose top reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it, and God appearing in heaven revealing Himself as the covenant-God of him and his seed, and promising that his seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and that in him and his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed. So Christ, by His death, procured that the gate of heaven should be opened towards the earth, and that there should be a union between heaven and earth, and that there should be a way from heaven to the earth procured, as it were, a ladder, by which there might be an ascent from this sinful miserable world to heaven. Christ procured this way to heaven for His covenant people, for His spiritual posterity, and therefore the foot of the ladder is set on the land of Canaan, the land of His people, on Jacob’s land, or the land of Jacob’s posterity; and Christ, by His death, procured that the angels of God might ascend and descend to and from the land of Canaan, in and through His mediation, or on His ladder, to be ministering spirits to the inhabitants of Canaan, (Heb. i. 14.) So through the death of Christ, God appears as the covenant-God of Him and His seed, promising to give heaven to Him and His seed, as in ver. 14 He promises to give Canaan to Jacob and his seed, and also, as bound in Covenant, to multiply His seed as the dust of the earth, as here to Jacob, (Isa. liii. 10;) and promising to give Him the Gentiles in all parts of the world, or from the four winds of heaven, to be His

OF T-UNIVE seed, (which was accomplished soon after the death of Christ,) as here He promises to Jacob that he should spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south, and as promising that “in him all the families of the earth should be blessed.” Note that Christ is evidently called by the name of Israel, one of the names of Jacob, in Isa. xlix. 8, which renders it more probable that Jacob is here a type of Christ.

(2.) Jacol) here represents a believer, or rather believers collectively, as the Chnrch is spiritual Israel, of whom Jacob, or Israel, is the father; and the stone that he slept or rested upon represents Christ, who is from time to time compared to a stone; and that Christ is represented by this stone seems more evident, because he anointed it, (ver. 18.) Thereby He is represented — that is, Christ, or the anointed, and is called so, not only as He is anointed of God, but also as anointed by His people, (see Dan. ix. 2o; Mark xiv. 3;) and another thing that confirms that this stone is a type of Christ, is what Jacob says of it in ver. 22, for Christ is the house of God, “in Whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” It was He that was signified by the Tabernacle and Temple, as is evident by what Christ says of His own body, for, says He, “destroy,” &c.; and the Lamb is said to be the temple of the New Jerusalem, (Rev. xxi. 22.) And it is still further evident by the use that he put it to, for he set it up for a pillar — i.e., for an altar, (see Exod. xxiv. 4.) For the oil that Jacob poured on it was to consecrate it as an altar, and was also as an offering to God on the altar, as the precious ointment that Mary poured on the head of Christ was an offering to Christ and to God through Him. And this will be more evident if we compare what is said here with chap. xxxv. 14, where we have an account that Jacob in the same place set up a pillar of stone (and probably it was the same stone) and poured a drink-offering thereon, and poured oil thereon. What we are told of, chap. xxxv. 7 — “And he built there an altar, and called it El-beth-el: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.” This altar probably (as I have observed) is the same spoken of in ver. 14, on which he poured a drink-offering and oil — viz., the stone which he set up for a pillar, which was probably the same stone that is spoken of in this place, or that that stone at least was a principal stone in the altar. But this he calls El-beth-el, — i.e., the God of Bethel, — because it represented the God of Bethel, or Jesus Christ, who is that God. Jacob promises, at the end of this chapter, that when God should return him again into his own land in peace, that this stone which he had set up for a pillar should be God’s house — i.e., this very place shall be that which I will make the place of worship, (and therefore he set up the stone that he slept on for a pillar or monument whereby to remember the place;) and this very stone shall be the altar on which I will worship and offer offerings to God: as we are told of David, when he had built an altar in the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite, in the place where the angel appeared to him; (1 Chron. xxii. 1,) which accordingly was the place where the Temple was built. And therefore, when Jacob was returnetl to Canaan and seemed to be neuiigent of his promise, God put him in mind of it, and commanded him to go and dwell there and make that the place of his worship, (Gen. xxxv. 1;) and therefore, doubtless, the stone that he set up when he came there, that we have account of, (verses 14, 15,) was in the very same place, and, we have all reason to think, the same stone. There God talked with him again then, and we have an account (ver. 13) that God went up from him in the place He talked with him, which denoted that. place where God appeared. There was the gate or entrance into heaven, as he says this place is, and so doubtless was the same spot. Besides that, we find Jacob calls it by the same name, ver. 15.... Hence we may learn that their altars of old were types of Christ, esiecially in His Divine nature. They represented Him who is the “rock” of Israel, (see

Judges xiii. 19.) And therefore it was the manner of the heathen to set up pillars or small altars instead of images, as Bedford in his “Scripture Chronology,” and other historians have observed: which was strictly forbidden to the children of Israel, (Levit. xxvi. 1, and so Dent. xvi. 22;) and the children of Israel were required to destroy the pillars of the people of the land, (Deut. vii. 5, and xii. 3;) and hence the children of Israel were strictly forbidden to have any other altar but one, — no other but the altar of the Lord, because God was one, and Christ was one, and because altars represented Christ. This is not the only place where the name of God is given to an altar. We have the like in Exod. xvii. 15. Jacob’s sleeping or resting on this stone, (for this stone, we are told, was his pillow,) typifies God’s people believing in or resting on Christ. Christ invites the weary to come to Him, and promises that in Hira they shall have rest. Jacob, while resting on this stone, has heaven’s gate opened to him, and a ladder reaching from him to God in heaven; so it is by faith in Christ that God’s people have heaven’s gate opened to them, and have a way prepared for them to ascend and come to God in heaven. Jacob, while resting on this stone, has God appearing to him as his covenant-God; so it is through faith in Christ that God becomes their covenant-God, and whereby they become interested in the promises of that covenant of grace, and it is by faith that they become related to heaven and have the privilege of the ministration of angels. Jacob’s sleep here represents both death and rest. If we look on Jacob here as a type of Christ, his sleep is a type of death. If as a type of the Church, or of the Israel of God, then it represents spiritual rest. But let us take the type which way we will, we may observe that the great privilege and blessing is obtained, of having heaven’s gate opened and a way to heaven from the earth, and the ministration of angels is enjoyed in Bethel, in the house of God, — i.e., in God’s Church, — and in the improvement of the ordinances of His house.

2-i. Gen. xxix. 27 — “Fulfil her week.”] By this it is evident that then, in those days, their time was divided out into weeks, or parcels of seven days, as it is now, by which may rationally be argued that the Sabbath was then observed among them, that it was an institution for the times before Moses, and that the remembrance of the institution was kept up in the world throughout the ages that preceded the Mosaic Dispensation. For the weekly division of time had its rise from the appointment of one day in seven to be observed as a Sabbath, and it was the observing the Sabbath that upheld this division.

25. Gen. xxx. 1.] It is an observation in the fulfilling of Scripture, that when God’s people have an immediate desire and pressing after an outward thing, they have their design sometimes answered, but therewith a sharp reproof from God; and usually find small satisfaction in their enjoying that about which they were so unsober in their pursuit. “Give children,” &c., said Rachel: she got children, and she died in bringing one of them forth.

26. Gen. xxxi. 24 — “Good or bad.”] i.e., Say nothing at all to him to compel him, to oblige him to return again, or to bring him again under thy service, or to oblige him to resign to thee any of his wives, or cattle, or substance. Say nothing that has such a tendency, or with any such view, whether it seem right and just to you or wrong, good or evil. I leave not you to judge of the rightness of what you shall say with this view, but charge thee to say nothing at all in the least to infringe on his liberty or his possessions. Laban came out after Jacob with such intentions, and he was now meditating what he would say to this purpose. His head was exceeding full of matter, but God charges him to suppress all, and not say one word tending to the design on which he was pursuing Jacob, however right and reasonable it might appear to him. God knew the heart of Laban, and He speaks to his heart. He knew how ready he would be to plead that the design he was upon was just, and that what he had meditated to say to Jacob was good and just. But God prevents him, by charging him to say nothing to the purpose he was pursuing, let it be good or bad.

27. Gen xxxii. 31.] Jacob goes away with a blessing, but yet halting on his thigh. God commonly, when He bestows some extraordinary spiritual blessing and peculiar favour, also at the same time brings some temporal affliction or difficulty, as Paul when admitted to the third heavens had a thorn in the flesh at the same time, lest he should be exalted above measin-e. Jacob’s halting on his thigh represents the saints getting along with difliculty and trouble, disappointment of their temporal aims, and their failing in the steps they take, as M’hat nature aims at and desires. Jacob’s lameness after he had the blessing, made him lean more on his staff’, so the saints’ afflictions they meet with in the world, make them live more by faith, (see ver. 10, and Num. xxi. 18.) Jacob himself when he had the blessing had with it that kind of lameness of which his halting on his thigh was a type, and so he had ever since he first stole the bles.sing from Esau. He presently upon it suffered banishment, went away poor and solitary, with nothing but his staff, to Padan-aram. There he met with crosses and disai)pointments: he was cheated with Leah instead of Rachel, for whom he served seven years, ami was forced to serve another seven years. Kacliel, his most beloved wife, was a great while barren, and after he had suffered twenty years’ exile from his father’s house, and hard service and a great deal of trouble from his father-in-law, he was forced to steal away, and his journey was attended with great difficulty and peril: he was in great danger ffrst from Laban, and then from Esau, and was forced to purchase safety from him with the loss of great part of his substance. He made him a present of five hundred and eighty of his cattle, and was forced greatly to bow and cringe besides; and then his daughter Dinah was defiled, which doubtless was a very sorrowful thing to him; and then he had more sorrow by the cruelty and treachery of Simeon and Levi’s two sons, which made him to stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants of the country, so that he was in fear of his life from them; and then Rachel, his most beloved wife, died in bringing forth her second child; and then Reuben, his first-born son, was guilty of incest with one of his own concubines, which must needs be a great grief to him; and then he had most bitter affliction in the loss of his beloved son Joseph; and then, doubtless, had a great deal of sorrow from the great sins and calamities there were in Judah and his family; and then there was a sore famine, and Jacob and his family were put to a great deal of trouble to get provision to support themselves, and he had much exercise, perplexity, and distress in the affair managed between Joseph and his brethren; and then he and all his family [had] as it were a second banishment from the land of Canaan, the land promised to him in Egypt, an idolatrous country, and never returned any more alive. That Jacob, who was so often blessed of God, and to whom God so frequently ministered such abundant favours to, should yet meet with so much trouble and sorrow in this life is a great evidence of a future state. The same may be observed concerning David. Halting is put elsewhere for afffiction or adversity: Ps. xxv. 15 — “But in mine adversity they rejoiced; “in the original, “in my halting,” (Micah iv. 6, 7; Zeph. iii. lU.)

28. Gen. xxxvii. 24.] The pit was empty, there was no water in it. Joseph’s brethren intended to famish him, or kill him with hunger and thirst, and it was so ordered afterwards that they would have died with famine had not they come and bowed down to Joseph to the earth for relief

29. Gen. xxxvii. 31-33.] Joseph’s brethren deceive Jacob their father by the blood of a kid instead of his son Joseph’s, his best beloved son; as he, being Esau’s brother, had deceived Isaac his father with the flesh and skin of a kid, instead of his son Esau’s skin and his venison, who was Isaac’s best beloved son. Thus is Jacob punished by God’s providence, (see xxix. 2o.)

30. Gen, xli. 40, &c.] This signifies the Father’s investing of Glirist the Mediator with the government of the Church and the Alorld. Joseph was exalted out of the dungeon to be a i)rince and a ruler over all the land. So Christ was exalted from being a prisoner f)fvin<lic[a]tivc justice out of the grave, and as it were out of the pit of

72 A^■^■oTATlONs on passages of sceiptuee.

bell, to be a prince, and to have all tilings put under Him. Pharaoh set Joseph over his own house. So God exalted Christ, and set Him over His Church, which is the house of God, (Heb. iii. 6,) and made Him King of heaven itself, which is the place of God. According to Joseph’s word Pharaoh’s people were to be ruled, only on the throne Pharaoh was to be greater than he. So Christ is made the head and ruler of angels and men; but yet God the Father is greater than Christ as Mediator; as Christ says, “My Father is greater than I,” He is oreater in His economical office than the Son, in that He is the person that sustains the dignity and maintains the right of the Deity. Pharaoh took off his ring from off his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand. So God the Father invested Christ with His own honour and dignity, that ail men should honour the Son as they honour the Father, and they cried before Him, “Bow the knee,” as it is said concerning Christ, “Let all the angels of God worship Him;” and

agreeable to this it is said, Phil. ii. 8-10 Joseph was thus exalted

as a reward for his being the means of saving the people from famine and death. So Christ is exalted to God’s right hand, and all things put under His feet in reward for His working out the work of redemption. Pharaoh exalted Joseph and made him head over Egypt, and put the people and all the land into his hand, that he himself mioht have the immediate disposal and ordering of that office of saving the people from famine that he had laid the foundation for. So Christ is exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, to dispose of the affairs of the actual applying and accomplishing that redemption that He had purchased; all tilings were committed to Him of the Father, that He might give eternal life to as many as God had given Him. The food of the land by which the people were to be saved from famine was committed to Joseph’s hands, that he might be the immediate dispenser of it. So the purchased blessings are committed to Christ. He has received gifts for men. When He ascended on high, He had the purchased blessings given to Him, that He Himself mio-ht bestow them on those that He purchased them for. He received the promise of the Father, even the Holy Ghost, without measure, to shed down on believers, as Joseph had corn brought into him in immense cuantities, (ver. 49.) Joseph had a vast flock in his hand. This signifies the sufferings of Christ for the supply of the wants of His peo))le. Joseph was advanced thus to be a saviour to his brethren and kindred. So Christ was exalted to be the Saviour of men, whom He became related to by His incarnation, becoming the brother of believers. The saints are Christ’s near relations. He that hears the word of God and keeps it, the same is His mother, and sister, and brother. Joseph, by his exaltation in Egypt, nuule way for his brethren’s reception there. He there prei-ared a place for them in Goshen, and made way for their reception there, by taking his brethren and presenting them to the king, and interceding with him for them, (chap, xlvii.) Pharaoh gave them the best of the land by giving it to Joseph for them, (chap, xlvii. 6,) and Joseph nourished his brethren in Egyy)t. So Christ, by His exaltation in heaven, made way for their coining there, prepared, &c. Joseph saved his brethren, though they hail been enemies, yea, though they had been his mortal enemies, though they would have put him to death, though they “sold” him. He saveil them, by his banislnnent [and] those very sutterings which their sin, their enmity, brought upon him, as it was with Christ; and he saved them from famine. He hrst humbled them before he made himself known to them; he exercised them with a variety of dispensations, hopes, fears, disappointments, confusions, perplexities, to humble them before he made himself known to them. They bring their money with them to buy corn, whereas that was not their way to obtain it of Joseph; lie would not accept of their money. So we must come to Christ for spiritual food, without our own righteousness, “without money and without price.” Joseph at first made himself strange unto them, and spoke roughly to them; charges them with not coming as friends, but as enemies, and thereby he makes them sensible of their guilt in their former treatment of him. So when the elect are under convictions, and are first stirred up to seek to God for salvation, God is wont, as it were, to frown upon them, to express His anger, as though He looked upon them as enemies; thereby to bring their sins to remembrance, and make them sensible of their guilt in their former treatment of Him. Joseph insists on it that he should look upon them as enemies till they delivered up their younger brother, that one brother that they kept back; that they were tender of as a child; that they pitied and

spared, and looked upon it that it would be too hard for him to be brought out of the family, and rent from the arms of his father and delivered up to another lord. So oftentimes sinners, when they begin to seek salvation, keep back something that is dear and tender in their eyes, and flatter themselves that they are not oblioed to deliver it up; they think it is too hard and cruel for them so to expose such an enjoyment or possession; but God will surely look upon them as enemies till all is delivered iip and nothing kept back. Joseph put them all together in ward three days. So God for a while holds sinners prisoners under conviction; they are shut up as condemned creatures; exposed to the execution of God’s wrath. Joseph pities them, and weeps with compassion for them at the same time that he treats them thus roughly. So God oftentimes pities sinners under conviction at the same time that He seems terribly to frown on them. AYhile they were backward to deliver up Benjamin, Joseph took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes. So while persons keep back some dear lust, God takes away some of their enjoyments from them. Before Joseph made known himself unto them, they did not understand his language; for he spoke to them by an interpreter. So sinners before their conversion don’t understand God’s language, and they therefore need the help and advice of ministers under their convictions, as interpreters for them. For a while they seem to have obtained their end; to have obtained food for their money; but this food lasts them but a little while before it was spent. So the false comfort that sinners obtain

7-i ANNOTATIONS ON PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE.

under conviction by their own righteousness lasts them but a little while before it is all spent. For a while they hoped their money was accepted; but they soon find it rejected, to their great disappointment and confusion. They come back to their father in the land of Canaan, who in this case represents the first Adam, or [the] nature which men have from him by their parents; the father whose tenderest and dearest child Benjamin was that was kept back; they consult with their father under this dithculty, as men under convictions in their difficulties are wont to consult nature. Their father blames them for yielding to the lord of the land so far as they had done, and greatly objects against delivering up Benjamin. He cries out, “All these things are against me,” as persons under convictions often do in a kind of discouragement; but, however, he at length is forced to it by sore famine. So men are, as it were, forced to deliver up their dearest lusts, that it grieves them to part with, by sore famine, by a sense of the extreme necessity of their case. He is brought to it by the possessions of Reuben and Judah. Reuben here represents the family of reason, which is the eldest child of man’s nature. Jacob in his blessing calls Reuben “excellency of dignity,” and the “excellency of power.” The standard of the camp of Reuben bore the image of a man. Reuben never consented to the selling of Joseph. Man’s reason never consents to his sin. Judah, the progenitor of Christ, the Word of God, the other brother that persuaded Jacob to deliver up Benjamin, signifies the word of God: or Judah represents the ministers of the word who preach the word of Christ; and therefore he rehearses the words of Joseph, and particularly declares his threatenings and solemn declarations, to persuade Jacob to deliver up Benjamin. Jacob, after disputing with Judah, delivers up Benjamin, the right-hand son, as the name’’ signifies. So nature, after it has long hung back, and much disputing with the word of God, and objecting against it, by the word being earnestly set home, at last yields to cut oil’ and deliver up the beloved lust and right-hand sin. Jacob, being at length forced by the extreme necessity of the case, delivers up that one son that he was most fond of, [if it must be so now, says he ;] he is brought, as it were, to yield up the case as to the enjoyment of his children. “If I am bereaved of ray children, I am bereaved.” So sinners must be brought, as it were, to yield up the case as to the enjoyment of their sins.”^ Nature must be brought to yield up the case as to the enjoyment tf natural enjoyments. But noAV although the former price that Jacob sent to Joseph for corn was rejected, yet he, having delivered up Benjamin, is still for purchasing corn with his own price, and therefore sends the best fruits that his land afforded and double money. So sinners under conviction, after they have been seeking salvation by their own righteousness, and have trusted in it for a while, have had comfort in it, and then are disappointed, and find to their surprise that God rejects the price they have offered before their thorough reformation: yet after they have more thoroughly reformed and proceeded further in religion, they make a new attempt, though the price they offered before failed; yet they hope, by doubliuiji; their ])vice and offering the best fruits of nature’s land, and by delivering up Benjamin, to prevail. Now again Joseph’s brethren have new perplexities and discouragements, they are ready to look on their case as desperate; they thought they were taken prisoners, (Gen. xliii. 18.) 80 it often is with sinners under convictions. After this distress they had a great deal of comfort and peace in hope of the acceptance of their present.

The steward, who here represents conscience, says to them, “Peace be to you, fear not.” They seem to be well accepted and very kindly treated in Joseph’s house, and they enjoyed a feast. But this peace and joy of theirs soon vanishes again and comes all to nothing, and, to their great confusion, their double money is found rejected. For now Joseph, that they thought had accepted them, aiul treated them so kindly for their present, appears more angry than ever with them, and sends a dreadful messenger after them, and lays a heavy charge upon them; fastensthe imputation of being enemies more fully than ever upon them, lays their vile treatment of him upon them as deserving death; yea, and by opening their sacks to their view makes the justice of the charge to appear, after they themselves had acknowledged that, if they were guilty as they were charged, death was a just punishment, (chap. xliv. 9.) So sinners under conviction oftentimes, after going far in religion, and after many perplexities and troubles, have at last great peace and joy in their own righteousness, vainly thinking that God accepts them and loves them for their presents that they offer; and they have a feast of false joy: but all soon vanishes, and God appears more angry than ever with them, and a messenger of death is as it were sent to seize them, even Conscience. He that before said to them, “Peace be to you, fear not,” and that invited them into Joseph’s home, and there made a feast for them, now charges them with enmity and treason, and condemns them to death; and their hearts are laid open by conscience to let them see what is there, even as the steward opened the men’s sacks to shew them the stolen cup and money; and they are made to own that the crime deserves death. Upon this Joseph’s brethren are seized and carried before Joseph, the lord they had sinned against, and there their lord sets the heinousness of their crime before them, and they are brought down to his feet, to lie on the ground before him. Their mouths are stopped, and they confess theii’ iniquity, (chap. xliv. 16,) and are brought to resign themselves into Joseph’s hands, to yield that he should be their sovereign and they his servants, but yet to plead for mercy, and then they were prepared for comfort; then Joseph reveals himself to them as their brother; then they are received indeed as friends and brethren, with great and lasting comfort. Then Joseph reveals to them the whole mysteiy of their salvation from famine, by their selling him, and his humiliation and exaltation in Egypt. And Jo.seph gives them an inheritance in Goshen, and then they see that it was their brother, and understood his voice, (chap. xlv. 12.) And hereupon they are accepted of Pharaoh, whose deputy Joseph was in the kingdom; and he, even Pharaoh, the original kino- of Egypt, gives them inheritance in the land, and Joseph bids them not regard their stuff, their former possessions, for all the land of Egypt (in this case a type of heaven) was before them; and now they are all clothed with changes of raiment, and they had sufficient provision given them to support them by the way till they came to Egypt, to Goshen, their inheritance, and he charges them not to fall ouby the way. When the king exalted Joseph, he o-ave him a new name. So Christ in the Revelation speaks of His “new name,” by which is meant that new honour and glory which He received at His exaltation. Joseph’s new name, Zaphnath-paaneah, signifies “revealer of secrets.” Christ was the greater revealer of se’crets (John i. 18) who came out of the bosom of the Father, and was the great prophet of God to bring to light mysteries that had been kept secret since the world began. Some translate Joseph’s new name “the saviour of the world,” [see

Pool, Syn.] Joseph was in some respect exalted over the whole world; the whole earth was brought into a dependence on him for life. For it is said, (verses 56, 57,) all came bending to him, as Joseph’s brethren did. So Joseyh was in a sense the saviour of the world, and to him every knee bowed, not only in Egypt, but throughout the whole earth. Men were saved by Joseph’s word, as we are saved by the word of Christ. It was his predictions, his warnings, his counsels that saved Egypt, and saved the world.

31. Gen. xliii. 34.] Thus he that is last is first, and the first last; the last is the greatest. He that is but as a little child, is most exalted; so he that is spiritually least, and most like a little child, is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, (Matt, xviii. 4.)

32. Gen. xlvii. 31.] The bowing here spoken of is a bowing of adoration, or a bowing to worship God, as is confirmed by what is said of David, parallel to this, 1 Kings i. 47, 48, and also by Heb. xi. 21.

33. Gen. xlviii. 22 — “Which I took out of the hand of the Amorite.”] This he speaks in the language of a prophet, according to which a prophet is often said to do that which he foretells shall be done, (see Jer. i. 1 0.) And they often speak of future events in the past tense; or he may speak of himself as taking the land by conquest, because his posterity should do it. To call them himself is agreeable to the language of abnost all his own prophecies. This passage is much illustrated by the next chapter, ver. 7, and chap, xxvii. 37.

34. Gen. xlix. 22 — “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even,” &c.] The word which is translated “branches,” properly signifies “daughters,” and the word which is translated “wall,” signifies both a “wall” and an “enemy;” so that the words maybe translated either, “whose branches run over the wall,” or, “whose daughters go over to the enemy.” But let it be translated either of the ways, the event referred to, doubtless, is the tribe of Benjamin s being supplied with wives. For their wives that they were supplied with from Jabesh-Gilead were of this tribe, for Jabesh-Gilead was in the half-tribe of Manasseh; and the daughters of Shiloh, which they catched when they came out ill dances, were of the tribe of Ephraim, for Shiloh was in that tribe. Thus their daughters went over to the enemy, or tribe of Benjamin, who were enemies to the other tribes of Israel, in that war in wliieh their women and most of the men were destroyed. Thus, also, the brandies or daughters of this fruitful bough or vine ran over the wall. As the whole i:ieople of Israel are several times in Scrijature compared to a vineyard, so here a particular tribe in Israel seems to be compared to a distinct enclosure of fruit-trees or vineyard that was walled in, (as vineyards were wont to be,) and so separated from other vineyards. Joseph is compared here to an exceeding flourishing bough or vine, whose daughters or branches run over the wall and get out of the enclosure and run into another vineyard. In that it is said his branches run over the wall, and the same word that signifies branches, also signifying (and more properly signifying) daughters; it seems to shew which way his branches shall run over the wall — viz., by his daughters breaking over the enclosure or limits of the tribe and going to another tribe.

35. Gen. xlix. 24 — “But his bow,” &c.] This was remarkably verified in Joshua and Gideon, who were of this tribe, as appears with respect to Joshua by Num. xiii. 8, and with respect to Gideon by Judges vi. 11, with Joshua xvii. 2, and Judges vi. 35. They were wonderful instances of those whose bow abode in strength, and the arms of whose hands were strengthened by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, who were strengthened, and succeeded by immediate help from God, as appears by their whole story. Jephthah the Gileadite was also of Joseph, being of the tribe of Manasseh: — [” from thence is the Shepherd, the stone of Israel.”] These words seem to have a remarkable fulfilment in Joshua, who was, as it were, the “shepherd of Israel,” who led them into Canaan to their pasture, and conquered their enemies for them, and was, in a subordinate sense, the “rock” of Israel’s salvation, wdio bore the name of Christ. Joshua is Jesus or the Saviour, and was a remarkable type of Christ, and who had Christ with him, and acted by His influence, and fought by His strength, and had His Spirit to guide him. It may also have respect to the ark and tabernacle being kept at Shiloh, as it was till the days of Samuel, for Shiloh was in the tribe of Ephraim, (Ps. lxxviii. GO, 67.) The ark was the type and symbol of Christ, the Shepherd and Rock of Israel; and the Tabernacle and the mercy-seat over the ark was the place of His presence. [“Prom thence,” &c.] — i.e., from the mighty God of Jacob, mentioned in the immediately jDreceding words. It seems, evidently, to be explained by the words immediately following — “Prom the God of thy father, and He will help thee.” Por so the words are, literally translated: “The arms of his hands were made strong” (thus He helped thee) “by the hands of the mighty (jlod of Jacob,” (who was Jo.sepli’s father:) “from thence is the Shepherd, the stone of Israel: even from the God of Jacob thy father, and He” (the Shepherd, the stone of Israel) “will help thee, and by Him shall the arras of their hands be made strong.” He the Messiah, the hand or the arm of the Lord, (as He is sometimes called,) which shall strengthen thine arms. [See Pool, SynojD., on ver. 25.]

EXODUS.

30. Exod. iii. 2, 8 — “And the angel of the Lord appeared,” &c.] That is, Christ — who is often so called — appeared, &c. This bush represents —

(L) The Imman nature of Christ, whose name is “the branch.” This bush well represented the human nature of Christ, because it was the gTOwth of the earth. Though Christ, with regard to His Divine nature, be the Lord from heaven, yet, with respect to His human nature, He was the growth of the earth; He was of earthly descent, of the race of mortal mankind. And upon the account of its low and humble stature; it was a bush or bramble, as the word in the original signifies. This well represented Christ’s state of humiliation, and also His meekness and lowliness of heart. And also upon the account of its tenderness and liableness to be destroyed. What more easily crushed or consumed than a bramble-bush? This bush, upon each of these accounts, well represented what is spoken of Christ in Isa. liii. 2. This bush was “a root out of a dry ground,” (see Hosea xiii. o; Deut. viii. lo,) for it was a bush that grew on Mount Horeb, as ver. 1, which was so called from the remarkable dryness of the place, for the word Horeb signifies dryness. The Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, His appearing in this bush is a type of His being manifest in the flesh. Christ is said (Deut. xxxiii. 16) to have dwelt in the bush; hereby was typified His dwelling in flesh. As the bush burned with fire and was not consumed, so Christ, in the human nature, suffered extremely; He endured the wrath of God, but was not overcome, perished not, wns not consimied. He rose again from the dead, and did not see corruption. Though His human nature was but a bush or tender plant, in itself easily capable of being consumed, and though the fire spent all its force upon it; yet, because of the Divinity that dwelt in it. it was impossible that it should be consumed. The power of God “was made perfect in weakness.” Satan could not prevail against Christ; though he cast Him into the fire, yet he could not destroy Him.

(2.) This bush represents the Church, the mystical body of Christ; as it was with Christ, so it was with the Church. It is a tender plant. It is a branch of the earth; and oftentimes is in the fire. But God will not suffer it to be consumed; but it always survives the flames; the gates of hell never prevail against it; her enemies are not suffered to swallow her up; God has promised that, when she goes through the fire, she shall not be burnt, neither shall the flames kindle upon her. But, doubtless, a special respect is herein had to the Church, now in her suffering state in Egypt, where her enemies had laboured to destroy her, but were not able; the more they afflicted them, the more

OLD TKSTAJfENT — EXODUS. 79

lliey multiplied, (lod alway.s eari’icd tlieiii on eagle’s wino-.s out of their enemies’ reach, and when they had well-nigh swallowed them up at the Red Sea, (Jod delivered them.

37. Exod. iii. 3 — “jMoses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”] The great sight that Moses here said he would turn aside to see, and that he did turn aside to see as he said, as we have an account in next verse, was not that the bush was not burnt, for this Moses had seen already, which was the occasion of his earnestly desiring to know further, and his turning aside to see something further. But what the great sight he turned aside to see was, why the bush was not burnt, or upon what account, or for what reason, as the word in the original signifies, Moses seems to have spoke these words after he had stood a while with astonishment beholding the bush burn, and when he after a while perceived the bush notwithstanding was not burnt, he then considered it must be some great and very extraordinary thing that must preserve the bush as in the midst of the flames. By the sight is meant the thing to be seen: it is as much as if he had said, “I will turn aside and see this great thing, on the account of which the bush was not burnt.” This great thing was that God dwelt in the bush, (Deut. xxxiii. 16.) It is probable Moses was sensible that there was something divine in the case; he might probably see some token of Divine glory there present, some extraordinary lustre or effulgence that had an appearance of exceeding awful majesty, and also surjjrising sweetness and pleasantness, — like that which Peter describes, (2 Pet. i. ] 6, 17,) speaking of what he saw on the Mount of Transfiguration, — which Moses saw in the time that the bush was burning, and also said to continue there after the flame was out, and concluded that the bush’s being preserved was by reason of that divine thing that he there beheld. This Moses seems to have respect to when he says, “I will turn aside and see this great sight.” This appearance was so divinely excellent and ravishing, that it seems to have left an everlastingimpression on Moses’s mind, and probably made him the more earnestly desirous to see God’s glory afterwards, (Exod. xxxiii. 18,) and he remembers it when he blesses Joseph, (Deut. xxxiii. 16.) And Moses had now a mind to come nearer to behold this great and sweet and wonderful sight, the glory of God united to and dwelling in the bush. This great sight that Moses speaks of represents two things, — (1.) The Incarnation of Christ, which was represented by God’s dwelling in the bush; (2.) The death and sufferings of Christ, which were represented by God’s appearing and dwelling in the burning bush, and in the bush when all on fire; which two things were the greatest sight that ever was seen by angels or men.

38. Exod. iii. 13 — “And they shall say to me, “What is his name? what shall I say unto them?”] They would be the more apt to enquire this, because they had now been so long in Egypt, where they had served other gods, that they had in a great measure forgotten the God of their fathers. Had it not been for God’s mercy to them in thus renewedly making Himself known to them, the case would soon have been with them as it was with other nations, who soon after the Flood forgot the true God and degenerated to the worship of idols, (see Ezek. xx. 5.) God chose them, they did not choose Him. He remembered them, and His covenant with their fathers when they had forgot Him. Israel was a people that God formed for Himself; He took them when they were (the body of them) idolaters and ignorant of Him, and made them His people. He redeemed them from the gods of Egypt, from their idolatry as well as from their taskmasters; and that was the most glorious redemption. Here is a notable instance of the Church’s being hidden and obscured, as it was under antichrist before the Reformation. There were, doubtless, left amongst them some true worshippers of God thinly sown among them, as it was under the tyranny of that city which is spiritually called Sodom in Egypt. The Church was now in the wilderness as it was then, (see Ezek. xx. 7-10; 2 Sara. vii. 23; Levit. xvii. 7; Joshua xxiv. T-i; Ezek. xxiii. 3-8, xix. 21-27.) We have another remarkable instance of the like nature in the time of the Jews’ captivity in Babylon, another great type of the Antichristian Church, (see Jer. xvi. 1 3.)

39. Exod. vi. 3 — “And I appeared,” &c.] God Almighty = all-sufficient, (see Gen. xvii. 1, xxviii. 3,) [“but by my name Jehovah,” &c.]. God, when He appeared unto Abraham, and promised that He would do such and such things for his seed. He appeared as God all-sufficient, a God sufficient to accomplish the things that He then promised. Now the time is come for the accomplishment of them, now He appears as Jehovah, as He that is what He was, or “is that He is,” not only sufficient to fulfilling, but actually fulfilling; the same in accomplishing, that He was in promising.

40. Exod. vii. 5 — “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth My hand.”] The first time that Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, they told him that Jehovah, the God of Israel, commanded that he should let His people go, as in the beginning of chap. V. Pharaoh then took it in great disdain to be told of such a command from Jehovah the God of Israel, a poor abject people, a company of slaves; and, by the character they bear, he concludes that He made no better figure among the gods than His people did among the nations. He makes answer, “Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah.” Jehovah was a hard name to him that he never heard of before, but he resolves that it shall be no bugbear to him. Jehovah! who is that? says Pharaoh in disdain. Now God tells Moses that He will make him know who He is — “He shall know that I am Jehovah when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.”

41. Exod. viii. 1 — “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”] As the children of Israel were redeemed out of Egypt that they might serve God, so are we redeemed by Jesus Christ, not that we might be at liberty to sin, but that we might serve God. They were (lolivored from servini:; their old masters the Egyptians, that so they might serve God. So we are redeemed from the service of sin, that we might henceforth serve God; being made free from sin, we are become the servants of righteousness, as Rom. vi. throughout; Gal. ii. ] 7-20. “Christ gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,” (Tit. ii. 14; Heb. ix. 1 4; Luke i. 7-i, 75; 2 Cor. v. 15.)

42. Exod. Lx. 10.] The Egyptians had oppressed Israel in the furnaces in which they burnt their bricks, and now the ashes of these furnaces were made as nmch of a terror to them as ever they had been to the Israelites. These furnaces were a type of hell. God sends upon the wicked those plagues that are some participation of the misery and destruction of hell, are as a sprinkling of the ashes of that furnace upon them. Their consciences are scalded with the hot embers of hell-fire. Their boils and blisters were exceedinff grievous, probably attended with extreme smart, like the continual scalding of the hot embers of a furnace. Therefore it is said the magicians could not stand before this plague. This sort of boil is called the botch of Egypt, (Dent, xxviii. 27.)

4tS. Exod. xi. 2, 3.] With so high a hand did God bring out the children of Israel, that He did not only set them at liberty from their slavery to the Egyptians, but He also took care that they should be well paid by the Egyptians for their first service as they went off. So that, after all the Egyptians’ obstinacy in refusing to part with their future service, God at last made them in effect part vfiih the benefit both of their future service and j)ast service too, (chap. xii. 36.)

44. Exod. xii. 22.] The striking or sprinkling the blood of the lamb with a bunch of hyssop on the two side-posts and lintel of the door signifies the cleansing of our conversation by the blood of Christ, which is, in the language of Sacred Scripture, called “our going out an4 coming in,” (1 Sam. xxix. 6.) Surely, &c.: 2 Sam. iii. 25. Thou knowest, &c.: 2 Kings xix. 27. I know, &c.: Isaiah xxxvii. 28; Ps. cxxi. 8. The Holy Spirit probably has respect to this very type of the going and coming being cleansed by the blood of the Paschal Lamb in 1 Pet. xviii 19, where the Apostle speaks of our being redeemed from our vain conversation by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. The destroying angel passed by none but those who had the blood of the Lamb on their door-posts, signifying that when God comes to proceed with men as a judge He will judge every one according to his works, and will save none but those whose conversation has been cleansed by the blood of Christ, [see ver. 7.]

45. Exod. xii. 85, 86.] The Hebrew word which our translators have rendered “borrow” is shaal, which does not signify to “borrow,” but to “ask one to give.” It is the very word used: Ps. ii. 8 — “Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance,” &c. [Shuckford’s “Connection,” vol. ii. p. 340.] The

F same word is used in chap. iii. 22, xi. 2. That to “ask to give,” or to “beg,” and not to “borrow,” is the proper English of the word according to the sense in which it is commonly used in Scripture, is abundantly evident by Buxtorf, (Lexicon, sith voce.) To lend is to “give” in 1 Sam. v. 28. It is probable that when the Egyptians urged the people to be gone, they mentioned to them their poverty, and the difficidty of undertaking such a journey without such and such supj)lies, particularly that they should need many things to offer to God and serve Him with. The Egyptians were not unacquainted with costliness in worship, and therefore would not think it strange that the great God that had wrought such wonders among them required a lasting service. The Egyptians were now made sensible how much it concerned them to reconcile themselves to this God, and so to obtain the favour of this people who were such peculiar favourites of His, and whom they had heretofore so greatly injured, and thereby so much provoked their God; even Pharaoh himself is now brought to desire their prayers. The wills of the king and people were now broke, and their frame now was to be kind to them, as heretofore it bad been to afflict and destroy them. They were now engaged with vehemence of spirit to counteract their former ill-treatment of the peojDle, They were brought to be willing, as it were, without hesitation or delay, to yield and resign up anything to save their lives, fearing they should very speedily be all destroyed. They were in a great terror and great conviction of mind, and like the sea, which after a very high and strong flood, when it comes to ebb, returns with the greater impetuosity. Mr Henry observes, “The Egyptians by their gifts probably intended to make atonement that the plagues might be stayed, as the Philistmes when they returned to the ark sent a present with it for a trespass-offering, having an eye to this precedent,” (1 Sam. vi. 6, taken with the context.)

46. Exod. xiii. 21 — “And by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.”] Here in the camp of Israel was something of a resemblance and image of what is said of new Jerusalem, (Rev. xxi. 23.) The glory of the Lord did lighten, for here the Shekinah, which was commonly called the “glory of the Lord,” gave them light; and in ver. 25 — “There shall be no night there,” the like of which was said of Zion, (Isa. Ix. 20,) and of the Church in her glorious state, (Zech. xiv. 6, 7.) Here is some resemblance, for the camp of Israel had always light, both day and night; nor was it a dim light that they had in the night, but a light sufficiently clear well to direct that vast multitude in travelling in the wilderness, so that night was, in a great degree, turned into day amongst them, (see Num. ix. 21; Deut. i. 83; Neh. ix. 12, 19; Ps. lxxviii. 14, cv. 39.) The congregation of Israel, in all their travels, were in the form of an army. They went up by their armies, (chap. xii. 51,) and they went up harnessed, (ver. 18.) They were in military order in their camp and in their marches, and the pillar of cloud and fire was their grand “ensign,” lifted up in the view of the whole army as the ensign which tlicy should follow and the standard by which they should abide; and as the pillar of cloud and fire was the symbol of the presence of Christ, so here was represented that which is spoken in Isa. xi. 10. As here this “ensign,” the pilhir of cloud and fire, was to lead the people to their rest, so ver. 12 — “And He shall set up an ensign for the nations.”...

■17. Exod. xiv. 20 — “And it was a cloud,” &c.] In like manner as the gospel and the discoveries God makes of Himself in and by Christ are a mere cloud, and darkness and foolishness, “a stone of stuml)ling and rock of ofience,” a “snare and gin,” “a savour of death unto death” unto some, while it is a most glorious light, the “power of God and the wisdom of God,” a “savour of life unto life” imto others.

48. Exod. xiv. 80 — “Dead upon the sea-shore.”] The Egyptians were very nice and curious in embalming and preserving the bodies of their great men, [and erecting stately sepulchres and monuments for them :] but here the utmost contempt is pom-ed upon all the grandees of Egypt. See how they lie heaps upon heaps, as the dung upon the face of the earth. The beasts and birds of prey are called to eat the flesh of captains and mighty men, (Isa. lxvi. 24.) Probably the Israelites stripped the slain and now got arms from them.

49. Exod. xvi. 10 — “The glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.”] The Shekinah that now appeared, and that appeared afterwards in the Tabernacle and Temple, was called the “glory of the Lord,” not only because of that outward brightness that appeared, but especially because that brightness was the symbol of the Son of God as there manifesting Himself, who is the brightness of God’s glory. The Glory of God is spoken of as a Person in Isa. iii. 8. See Rev. xxi. 23.

50. Exod. xviii. 2-5.] What is here related, if that clause in 2d verse, “after he had sent her back,” had not been inserted, would have been much such a difficulty as there is in some other parts of the Scripture history through the brevity of the relation. We have an account that Moses, when he went from Jethro into Egypt, took his wife and his children with him; and yet here we have an account of Jethro’s bringing of them to him in the wilderness frotn his own house, as if Moses had not taken them with him when he went away. We should have been ready to suspect that this was a blunder in the Historian, had it not been here hinted that Moses had at some time sent her back, for we have no account of her being sent back anywhere else. We may here observe the remarkable self-denial Moses subjected himself to, whereby he was fitted for those privileges he afterwards received of God, and which was rewarded by these privileges. First, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; he renounced the wealth and glory and pleasures of the kingdom of Egypt, that he might have had as the heir of Pharaoh’s croni, choosing rather to sutler affliction with the people of God. All this he forsook for a share with God’s people. And then he met with another great trial; he was banished away from those whose company he preferred to all the glory of Egypt; yet he might not enjoy that, but was driven away alone into the wilderness, wandering in a poor disconsolate, desolate condition, he knew not whither; and now, after he had dwelt forty years in the land of Midian, in the family of Jethro, into which he had married, and had a family and a place of rest there, he was called on God’s errand to forsake his wife and children without ever expecting to see them any more, and once more to leave all that he had to follow Christ.

Corol. Hence we may learn that ministers, in order to fit them for the service of Christ, should be brought to be willing to be cast off even by their own people, by saints, by those to whose good especially they are ministers. Moses was cast off by his brethren the Midianites.

51. Exod. xix., XX.] As there was a trumpet at the giving of the Law, so a great trumpet will sound when the Law comes to be executed at the day of judgment. As then ]Iount Sinai was in a conflagration, [so] at the day of judgment the whole earth will be in a conflagration, and the other appearances will be proportionably greater, the trumpet louder, the appearing majesty of God greater, the fire more terrible, the thunder and lightning more dreadful. How miserable will those be that then shall feel the Almighty vengeance of that Being whose wrath will be proportionable to those appearances of His dreadfulness! See Ps. lxviii. 8, 9.

52. Exod. xix. 10, 11 — “Sanctify them to-day and to-morrow,” &c.] The third day here spoken of, or the day on which God came down on Mount Sinai, was the first day of the week, as is evident, because the feast of Pentecost, which was appointed in commemoration of this, was appointed to be always on the first day of the week, as appeal’s by Lev. xxiii. 15, &c., so that the days wherein the Jews were to sanctify themselves in order to this day were the sixth and seventh days of the week; but chiefly the seventh, for there was only a part of the sixth remaining when God gave the order; and probably but a little part, considering the antecedent transactions of the day which we have here account of. So that the Jewish sabbath was to be spent in preparing themselves for the day following — viz., the first day of the week, the day on which God descended and gave the Law on Mount Sinai in honour to this day, being the day on which Christ was to rise from the dead and on which God would descend more gloriously on His Apostles, to reveal the glorious gospel. Thus this day is, by God’s own direction, set above the day of their sabbath; the day of the Christian is honoured above the Jewish sabbath by God’s appointing the Jewish sabbath to be a day of preparation for it, as the Jewish Dispensation was a preparation for the Christian. The Law is a handmaid to the Gospel, and is “our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ,” (Gal. iii. 24.)

53. Exod. XX. 3-7.] The three first commandments. The first commandment respects the object of worship; and especially forbids those things in worship that are against God the Father. The second commandment respects the means of worship; and especially forbids those things in worship that are against God the Son, that it should not be by other loiils and mediators instead of Christ, the Lord our God, who is, as it were, the husband of His people, and is a jealous God, a jealous husbaiul, that will not bear spiritual adultery. This commandment forbids our makino; use of other images in our worshipping God besides Christ, who is “the image of the hivisible God, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,” by which inuige alone God makes known Himself and sets forth Himself, and shews His glory as the fit object of our worship; for we behold “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The Heathen had images that they might have something present with them as representatives of the Deity that was absent; but Christ only is our Immanuel or “God with us.” The third commandment forbids those things in worship that are especially against the Holy Ghost, even the unholy manner of worship. We ought, when we come to God to worship Him, to come by the Son, that we may come by right means; and Ave ought to come by the Holy Spirit, that we may worship with a right spirit and in a holy manner. These sins against the Holy Spirit are represented as peculiarly exposing persons to Divine vengeance without forgiveness, agreeable to what we are taught in the New Testament.

54. Exod. XX. 4 — “Any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above”] — i.e., the likeness of sun, moon, or stars, or any bird; [or “that is in the earth beneath “] — i.e., of any man, woman, beast, or creeping thing; [or “that is in the water under the earth “] — i.e., any fish. This interpretation is evident from Dent. iv. 16-18. That the second commandment has respect to worshipping the true God by images, see Deut. v. 7, 8..

55. Exod. XX. 8 — “Eemember.”] This expression “remember” was probably the rather used because this was not the first institution of the Sabbath; it had been too much forgotten, especially while the children of Israel were in Egypt. The Sabbath had also been renewedly commanded, (chap, xvi.) God here charges them to take notice of His institution of the Sabbath, and not to forget it as they formerly had done.

56. Exod. xxiii. 20-23.] God says of this Angel, “My name is in Him.” God had a little before, from this same Mount Sinai, declared to Moses with very great solemnity that He might thereby make Him known to the children of Israel (who were become very ignorant of Him) what His name was — viz., “I Am that I Am,” and “Jehovah,” (Exod. iii. 13, 14, and again chap. vi. 2, 3;) and again, very lately after the children [of Israel] were come to that Mount Sinai where God revealed Himself to Moses and told him His name, to declare it to the children, the people heard God speak from thence Himself in a most solemn and awful manner, with a great voice declaring the same name, chap. xx. 2 — “I am Jehovah,” &c., which were the first words of God that they heard from Mount Sinai when He spoke to them from thence, when “the mountain burnt with fire,” &c. This was at most but a few days before God said this that He does concerning His Angel, and perhaps it was the same day. So that when

He says, “My name is in Him,” they would naturally understand no other than that name that He had lately revealed Himself by, which was in an eminent manner His name, even “I Am that I Am,” or “Jehovah,” which being in an eminent manner God’s name, above all other names expressing His nature; and it having been a common thing in those days from the beginning of the world to give names to express the nature of things, they naturally must understand it that God’s nature was in Him, and that as His name Jehovah belonged to Him, they must naturally understand it that the thing expressed by that name was in Him. And that the children of Israel understood it so, is also confirmed by this — that here God commits the care of the congregation to this His angel, that He might go before them as their Captain, and lead them and bring them into the land of Canaan, and fight for them and possess them of the land; and therefore when the Angel appeared to Joshua with a sword drawn in His hand, (Joshua v. 13,) and told them that as the Captain of the’ Lord’s host He was come, Joshua seems to understand Him to be this Angel, and therefore immediately falls on his face, and the Angel teaches Joshua to pay Him divine respect by taking off his shoes because the ground was holy, as Moses was commanded when Jehovah appeared to him at the Bush, and he obeyed; and afterwards in the process of the story this Angel is called Jehovah, as in the next chapter, ver. 2., by the penman of the history. What is said of the Messiah, Micah v. 5, is parallel with this — “And He shall stand,” &c.; Prov. xxi. 24 — “Proud and haughty,” &c. — i.e., that is His true nature and character. The saying, “My name is in Him,” evidently implies as much as that my Divine essence and character is in Him. By God’s name is plainly meant His internal nature and essence, in Prov. XXX. 4. Why should it be there represented that none can tell what God’s name is when God had so plainly and expressly declared it to Moses, and told him that His name was Jehovah and I Am that I Am? Therefore the meaning might be that none could comprehend that infinitely perfect nature signified by that name. “None by searching can find out God;” His nature “is high as heaven; what can we do? deeper than hell; what can we know,” (Job xi. 8.)

57. Exod. xxviii. 15 — “Of judgment.”] So called because they were wont to make use of it to inquire of God in judgment, or in determining causes and controversies. For when the people had controversies among themselves, or causes to be judged, they were wont to come to inquire of God. See Exod. xviii. 15, 16; Lev. xxiv. 12; Num. xv. 84; Dent. xvii. 8, 9, &c.

58. Exod. xxxii. 1 9 — “And brake them.”] Moses’s breaking the tables seems to signify the following things: —

(1.) That sin breaks the Law, and particularly that it breaks it as a covenant of works. The tables were the tables of the Covenant. The ten commandments contained a new revelation of the covenant of works, of which two ways of fulfilment were profposed. One was by mere man, the other was by Christ. These tables of the Law were the workinaiiship of God, without any hewing of Moses’s, as the tables of the heart of man in innocency, wherein the Law was written, were already prei)ared by God, and needed not any work of the Law or hewinu; of leoal conviction to prepare it.

(2.) Another thino- signilied by Moses’s breaking the table was God’s breaking His Covenant between Him and the people, and so were threatened to be cast off from being His Covenant people, (for there were the tables of the Covenant between God and the people,) agreeable to God’s threatening, (verses 9, 10; see chap, xxxiv. 1.)

•59. Ibid.] God, as it were, brake the tables in pieces, as disannulling all hopes of men’s ever obtaining life in that way. Now this second time the tables are made by the ministrati(,)n and instrumentality of Moses, who herein is a type of the gospel ministry. God commanded that the second tables should be committed to the ark to preserve them, that they might not be broken as the first were, (compare Deut. ix. 16, 17, with x. 1, 2.) Thus the affair of the preservation of the hearts of God’s people in holiness is committed to the keeping of Christ. The delivering of the tables of stone this second time is spoken of as the making of a New Covenant, (Exod. xxxiv. 10.) When Moses came down from the Mount with these new tables it was with his face shining, and not with wrath in his face as before. It was this Covenant that was renewed in Deuteronomy. This was a lively type of what we read of in Jer. xxxi. 31, 32, (see place, antl Heb. viii. 9.) What is said in these places would lead one to think that Moses’s breaking these tables signified the breaking or God’s setting aside, not only the Covenant of works, but that old federal Dispensation by which God was as a husband to that people Israel, because of its proving insufficient through their sins to make way for a better Covenant; a federal Dispensation to be introduced by Christ, and in Him to be fulfilled and confinned, and made an everlastijig Covenant, as the second tables made instead of these were secured and kept safe in the ark.

60. Exod. xxxiv. 1.] Moses was commanded to hew two tables of stone like the first that were broken, signifying that after man had broken the Law which God wrote at first on the tables of his heart in innocency, which was God’s own workmanship, that in order to the Law’s being written on the table of the heart again after the Fall, the heart needs to be first prepared by being hewed by Moses — i.e., hewed by the Law of Moses, or by legal convictions, but that the Law can go no further than this. It can prepare the heart, but it is Christ’s work, and His only, to write the Law in the heart: Rom. viii. 3, -i — “What the law could not do,” &c. Moses was commanded to prepare these second tables to bring them with him that He might write the Law on them, when He should cause all His goodness to ])ass before him, and proclaim His sovereign mercy in forgiving iniquities, &c., which should preserve these tables from being broken as the first were, would prevent a final breach of Covenant between God and the people, (compare chap, xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 1-7, 10; Jer. xxxi. 31-33, and 32, 40.) There is this in the nature of the case that confirms that the breaking of the first table was a type of the breaking of the first Covenant, and the utter impossibility of men’s obtaining life by the Law. Moses himself in all probability cast away the tables and broke them beneath the Mount when he came to see the golden calf, under a strong apprehension that was impressed on his mind by what he then saw, that it was not worth the while to carry this holy Law to such a people under any notion of the keeping it, and so obtaining God’s favour by that means. The ten commandments at first were given with thunder and lightning and earthquake; but now the second time with a gracious proclamation of mercy, long-suffering, abundant goodness and truth, and forgiveness of iniquity, transgression and sin, yet mercy perfectly consistent with infinite holiness and strict justice, “which will by no means clear the guilty.” When the children of Israel had broken the Covenant, Moses cast it away and broke the tables in pieces, which represents God’s utterly casting away that Covenant made at first with mankind as now entii-ely useless, the obtaining life in that way being now utterly and everlastingly to be despaired of, (see chap, xxxii. 1 9, and xxxiv. 1.)

LEVITICUS.

6L Lev. i. 9.] The inwards and the legs were to be washed to represent purity of heart and “walk.”

62. Lev. X. 1, 2.] This awful destruction of two of the priests, the sons of Aaron, happened on the eighth or last day of the consecration of Aaron and his sons, by which the Levitical priesthood was first introduced, or on the first day of Aaron and his sons officiating as priests. That it was on this day appears, because it was on this day they offered the goat (Lev. ix. 3, 15) which was burnt, because on this day such things had befallen Aaron that he was not fit to eat thereof, as in the 1 6-20 verses of this chapter. Thus the service of the Levitical priesthood was begun with the woeful death of two of the priests that were consumed by the Divine wrath, [and] thus it pleased God to shew the insufficiency of the Levitical priesthood at the first setting of it up. He observed that they were so insufficient to make atonement for others that they were liable to the Divine wrath themselves for their own sins, [see PoOL, Synop. in loc. ;] and this was also so ordered to impress on the minds of the priests a sense of the sacredness of their work, and the infinite holiness and majesty of that Being with whom they had to do in their office, as ver. 3.... There is no temptation visible that Nadab and Abihu should have to offer “strange fire” rather than the “holy fire” that had descended from heaven. But the case with them seems to have bee]i this — that day being the first day that ever they had officiated in the priest’s office, and a day of rejoicing and feasting, wherein they fed on their

OLD TESTA IkfENT — LEVITICUS. 89

peace-oflferings; and it seems that these two young men had in this Feast in a measure intoxicated themselves with strong drink, whereby they either became unable to keep exactly to the points of the Law in the execution of their ottice and to distinguish between holy and profane, or at least made less careful so to do; so that while they were elevated with drink they did not distinguish between holy fire and common fire, which seems to be the special reason of God’s appointing that Law, which he does in verses 8-11; for that Law seems to be given on this occasion. It was given on the same day that Nadab and Abihu died, as a])pears on comparing the beginning of the IX*’’ chapter with the latter end of this; and it was immediately upon it, for it was while the atlair of their offering the sacrifices of the day were under consideration, as appears by ver. 12 seq. — Corol. By this it is manifest that persons are responsible before God for those crimes they commit when drunk.

Another thing observable concerning Nadab and Abihu’s death is this. We have an account in the latter verse of a fire coming out from before the Lord and consuming the sacrifices on the altar. Here we have an account of fire in like manner coming out from the Lord and consuming not the sacrifices offered, but the persons that offered, because they had not respect to and did not trust in that fire from the Lord consuming the sacrifice, but offered strange fire, fire of man’s kindling, whereby we seem to be taught that they that come to God and do not trust in the Atonement for sin, made by Christ’s being consumed in the fire of God’s wrath, shall be consumed by that fire of God’s wrath themselves. They that come to God offering strange fire, and dare to appear before Him in their own righteousness, He will be a consuming fire to them. They will be exposed to all the fierceness of the flame of God’s vindictive justice, having no benefit of the execution of it on Christ the great sacrifice for sin.

63. Lev. xiv. 12-1 8.] The sacrifice was to be offered to God with oil They were to be waved together before the Lord, and after the Lamb was slain, and his blood shed before the Lord, the Priest was to sprinkle of the oil seven times before the Lord. So the sacrifice of Christ was offered up to God with the Spirit, with Divine love, love to God and love to men, which sanctified the sacrifice and made it effectual. Both the blood and the oil were first offered to God before they were applied to the leper. So not only is Christ’s blood first presented to God before it is applied to the sinner, but the spirit of love that He had without measure first flows out to God, before it flows out to the sinner, and be communicated to him in sanctification. In the application, both the blood and oil are applied to the right ear of him that was to be cleansed, to cleanse the ear, by which men hear and listen to the commands and counsels of God, and the ofi’ers and invitations of the gospel; and the thumb, the chief part of the right hand, to cleanse the hands by which we work; and to the chief part of the right foot, to cleanse the feet by which we walk. The application of the blood is to cleanse from the guilt of sins of the ear or heart, and of the hands or works of the hands, and of the feet as the way to walk. The application of the oil which followed signifies the sanctification of them by the Holy Spirit. The blood and oil were first applied to the ear, hand, and foot, and then afterwards oil was poured on the head of the leper, to signify that persons are first justified, then sanctified, and then glorified, as pouring oil on the head was used as a token of initiation to some high and honourable office and great dignity, as that of prophet, priest, or king, as the saints when glorified are made kings and priests unto God; and as the ear is sanctified to hear God’s commands, and the hands to do God’s work, and the feet to walk in God’s way before the pourmg oil on the head, it shews that a holy conversation is the only way to glory.

64. Lev. xix. 14.] Though the fear of these deaf and blind will not restrain you, because they cannot hear or see you, yet God hears and sees....

Q5. Lev. xxiii. 8 — “Convocation.”] By this it appears that although the children of Israel were obliged to meet together at the Temple but three times in the year, yet the weekly sabbath among them was from the beginning a day for their meeting together for some sort of religious public worship, which is confirmed from 2 Kings iv. 23; Isa. lxvi. 23; Ezek. xlvi. 3. Whence it may be argued that the people had something like synagogues among them longbefore the captivity in Babylon, which is confirmed by Ps. lxxiv. 8. The word translated “synagogue” signifies a convention, congregation, or meeting together. See also Ps. lxxxiii. 9.

66. Lev. xxiii. 10.] The sheaf was to be offered to God on the first day of the week after the Passover, on the same day that Christ rose. It was the first-fruits of all the seed sown. So Christ was “the first-fruits of them that slept.” The body that dies and is buried is compared to the seed of bread, corn sown in the earth, (1 Cor. XV. 36, 37;) and Christ’s resurrection in particular is compared to this, (John xii. 24,) and the end of the world, the time of the resurrection, is represented by the harvest, (Matt. xiii. 39.) Things rising in the Spring, after all seemed to be dead in winter, is a lively image of the resurrection. This sheaf was the first-fruits of the earth that they had in the Spring; and it is to be noted that the time when this sheaf of the first-fruits was offered was not only on the same day of the week, but at same time of year, the first day of the week after the Passover, as that was.

NUMBERS.

67. Num. X. 85, 36.] The ascending of the ark out of the wilderness into Canaan, “the land flowing with milk and honey,” typified the same thing with the ark afterwards ascending into Mount Zion, even the ascension of Christ into heaven; and therefore the same worcU wore uttered by David on that occasion that were uttered by Moses on this, (Ps. lxviii. 1,) and therefore, also, David on that occasion speaks of this niarchinL;; of the ark through the wilderness, (Ils. lxviii. 7.) In these words that IMosos spake on the occasion of taking up tJie ark in order to its ascending into Canaan, — viz., “Ivise uj),” &c., — respect seems to be had to the glorious victory and triumph Christ had over His enemies that He had been conflicting with, in His resurrection and ascension spoken of, (Ps. lxviii. 18;) and in those words which Moses uttered when the ark rested, — “■■ Return, 0 Lord,” &c., — respect is had to Christ’s returning again to the earth, after His ascension, l)y His Spirit, (agreeable to His promises, John xiv. 18-23, and xvi. IG,) whereby the number of His people was so vastly increased, agreeable to Ps. ex. 1-3.

G8. Num. xi. 29.] This wish of Moses was fulfilled in the Christian Church, after Christ’s ascension; according to the prophecy of Joel; (chap. ii. 28, &c.,) God put His Spirit in His extraordinary gift upon the saints in general throughout the world.

()9. Num. xiii. 30.] According to Caleb’s faith so was it done unto him. The people were discouraged with that report of the spies, that there they saw giants, the sons of Anak, and that they were in their own sight as grasshoppers, and so they were in their sight, (verses 28, 33.) Caleb was confident that they were well able to overcome them, and therefore God gave Caleb Hebron for his possession, which was the chief seat of these giant.s, as appears by ver. 22; (Joshua xi. 21, and xiv. 12, 15.) God enabled Caleb himself to drive the giants thence, (Joshua xiv. 12, and xv. 13, 14.)

70. Num. xxvii. 18, 19, 23.] By what is here said it is manifest that it is proper, in ordaining or appointing a person to an office in the name of God, to give a charge with the laying on of hands.

D E U T E R 0 N 0 I^I Y.

71. Deut. iv. 21, 22.] In this Moses was a type of Christ. God was angry with Moses for their sakes. So God was, as it were, angry with Christ for our sakes. He bore the wrath of God for our sakes. Our ini(|uities were laitl upon Christ. Our guilt lay upon Him, and so He in some respect partook of our guilt. So JMoses partook of the guilt of the children of Israel when by their rebellion they provoked his spirit, so that he “spake unadvisedly with his lips.” And Moses was, as it were, a sacrifice for them; he died in the wilderness, and they lived and went out to possess the good land, as in ver. 22. Moses mentions this as an instance of God’s mercy to the peojile, as is evident by the foregoing verse, and by ver. 22 — “But ye,” &c. God was pleased so greatly to testify His displeasure against Moses’s sin, though he but lightly partook of the sin of the congregation, as utterly to refuse to suffer him to go over and possess the good land, and yet to suffer them, the children [of Israel] of that evil generation, who partook more largely of their fathers’ sin, to go over. God insisted on having a great outward manifestation of His displeasure against the sin of that congregation. The death of so great a person and so holy a person as Moses, the head of the congregation, (who only was nearly related to them, and lightly partook of the evil of that degenerate time,) was so; as God, in a time of public judgment, is pleased sometimes to slay the righteous with the wicked, whereby there is so much greater and more awful testimony of His displeasure to the world, (Ezek. xxi. 8, 4.) God thus slaying Moses and not suffering him to go in to the good land, God looked on the outward manifestation of wrath by this means to be sufficient without slaying the congregation, and so the younger generation were spared, and suffered to go in to the good land. Thus Moses’s death w;is a kind of atonement for the congregation as to temporal judgment and manifestation of God’s wrath in this world, and so he was an eminent type of Christ.

72. Deut. iv. 82-34.] That which is here mentioned is spoken of as the wonder of wonders — that a people should hear God speaking to them out of the midst of the fire, such a devouring fire that was so terrible to behold, that had such peculiar manifestations of God’s awful majesty and His consuming justice and vengeance, (see chap, v. 25,) and “yet live.” It is not to be supposed that God would speak of this as so exceedingly and beyond all parallel wonderful, but that He had in His eye that which is indeed the wonder of wonders, and which is often spoken of as such by the prophets, which God’s people are the subjects of through Jesus Christ. Through Him we hear God speaking to us out of the midst of the fire. God manifests Himself to us in all His dreadful majesty and most terrible and strict justice, and yet we live; we are safe; God appears to us as a strict judge and terrible revenger of all sin, and yet as our Saviour and a fountain of life to us. God is just, and yet the justifier of him that believes on Jesus. Although this that the children of Israel were the subjects of at Mount Sinai is here spoken of as so exceeding wonderful, yet this which is accomplished by Christ is spoken of as so much more wonderful. These things which God did for the children of Israel, when He brought them out of Egypt, are represented as no more worthy to be mentioned or remembered after God had wrought this, (Jer. xvi. 14, 15, and xxiii. 7, 8; and Isa.xliii. 18, 19.) Balaam does in effect say that these things that God wrought for Israel, when He brought them out of Egypt, are typical of that wonderful, astonishing thing which He would work for them in the latter days: Num. xxiii. 28 — “According to this time [or agreeable to what God has done at this time] it shall [hereafter] be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought! ‘See also Micah vii. 15. The context is a full proof that this was what God had in His eye when God spake to the children of Israel from Moimt Sinai in so terrible a manner, It was in giving the Law; and thus God’s people hear God speaking to them from Mount Sinai in all ages; for they all hear God’s voice in His holy, strict Law. God’s appearing at that time as a “consuming tire,” without doubt was a rei)resentation of the thing spoken of here in ver. 24< — “The Lord thy God is a consunung fire, even a jealous God;” and the words of the text we are upon are brought in as an evidence of what is spoken of in the immediately preceding verses — viz., God’s forbearirig to execute justice on the people for their wickedness and His forgiving their iniquities, in the exercise of His great mercy, and His faithfulness to the Covenant of grace made with their Fathers.

73. Deut. V. 7, 8.] That this first commandment has respect to worshipping other gods; but the second has respect to worshipping the true God by images, is confirmed by chap. iv. 16-18. The people were in danger of representing God by some image of bird or beast, or some other animal, because the Egyptians, that were a neighbouring nation, and a people among whom they had dwelt, represented all invisible things by images or hieroglyphics.

74. Deut. V. 26.] These words, with the context, lead us to suppose that the apprehension that seemed to be so generally fixed in the minds of God’s people of old came from a tradition handed down from the ancient patriarchs, that sinful man could not have immediate access to God, and intercourse with Him who is a consuming fire; and that the presence of God, and to have to do with Him directly without a Mediator, would be the sinful creature’s immediate destruction. See Exod. xxxiii. 20; Gen. xxxii. 30; Exod. xxiv. 1 1; Judges xiii. 22, 23. See Pool, Synop. on Exod. xxxiii. 20. See ver. 24 of this chapter, and Deut. iv. 33; Judges vii. 22, 23. From Judges xiii. 22, 23,.. it appears that this notion was not from an apprehension that death would be the natural consequence of so great and terrible a sight, but that sinful men in such a case would be exposed to be slain by the anger of God.

75. Deut. ix. 21 — “And I cast the du.st thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.”] This brook in all probability was the water out of the rock, for that rock was in Mount Horeb, (Exod. xvii. 1-8,) the momit that is here spoken of in ver. 8. If there had been any other brook there before, it would not be said that there was no water to drink, as Exod. xvii, 1. There would have been no such murmuring for want of water, nor would there have been occasion to fetch water out of the rock. From the dryness of the place the mountain was called Horeb, which signifies dryness. This brook that came forth out of the rock, and that descended out of the mount of God, was a type of the Holy Spirit; the same with Ezekiel’s waters that came out of the Temple, and the same with the pure river of water of life that proceeded out of the throne of God and the Lamb, and the same with those rivers of “living water” spoken of, John vii. 38, 39, which, we are there told, is meant of the Holy Spirit. The idol of the children of Israel is ground to powder, and the dust of it cast into this brook, to signify that it is by God’s Spirit that God consumes idols and destroys the kingdom of Satan, The same seems to be signified by Hezekiah’s casting the idolatrous altars into the brook that watered Jerusalem, God’s holy city, (2 Chron. xxx. 14, and also 2 Chron. xxix. 16.) We are told (Exod. xxxii. 20) that Moses made the children of Israel drink of the water; but that was no otherwise than as he strewed the dust on that brook which the con- 5>-reo;ation wholly depended on for drink, and so were obliged to drink of it. Their drinking that water in which their idol was consumed was a type of repentance, in which men are made partakers of, and have the influences of that Spirit that destroys those sins and consumes those idols that they formerly were devoted and addicted to. There is another thing also, that perhaps is more especially intended by that which we have here an account of. There seems to be a special respect to this (Ps. xcix. 8) speaking of Moses and Aaron — “Thou answeredst them, 0 Lord our God: Thou wast a God that foro-avest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions,” which is agreeable to the history of this affair in chap, xxxii. of Exodus, where we have an account of God’s pardoning the people on Moses’s intercession; but vengeance was taken on the calf they had made. The idols of the people are called “their inventions,” so Ps. cvi. 28, 29, and verses 38, 39. They sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they were defiled with their own works, and went a-whoring with their own inventions. God’s fierce wrath and vengeance was typically executed to the full on the golden calf; three things were done to it that are made use of to signify the merciless executions of God’s wrath in the perfect destruction of him that is under guilt. Moses burnt it with fire, and stamped and ground it to powder, beat it very small, even till it was as small as dust; and that brook that this dust was mixed with signified the blood of Christ, for it was as it were the bleeding of the Kock that had been wounded by the rod that smote it, and “that rock was Christ.” The calf, in thus having vengeance executed upon it, being cast in its utter destruction into this brook, signifying that the sin of those who are pardoned of God has full vengeance taken on it in the blood of Christ. Their calf is here called “their sin.” The water of this brook was the drink of the children of Israel, with this destroyed and ruined calf in it; and thus it is that believers do by faith drink the blood of (jhrist — viz., as an atonement for their sins, or as that in which their sin is fully punished and perfectly destroyed, and justice fully satisfied.

76. Dent. xi. 24.] The land was not given in this extent, but a small part of it, till David’s time. Then first the people had given them the promised land fully, though the people probably expected immediately upon their entry into the land [to “possess” it] This is an instance of the gradual fulfilment of the promises that God makes to His Church. So the promises made to God’s people when they should return from Babylon, in the main things contained in them, were not fulfilled till Christ came, and will not have their fidlest accomplishment till the last calling of the Jews. So the blessings that are so often promised should come by the Messiah are principally deferred till after the destruction of Antichrist.

77. Dtnit. xii. 5.] God forlxtrc to choose Him a place in Israel for His settled habitation to place His name there till the days of David, which was a manifestation of the displeasure of God against that people for their frequent transgressions and apostasies. He refused to settle His abode among them as long as they remained so nnsteady in His service and so y)crversc in their ways; but walked in a tent and in a tabernacle as ready to dejiart, or at least undetermined whether to stay with them or not, and yet in His great goodness loath to leave them; but at last He did actually depart from them, when He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh. But remembering His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He returned again, but then stayed in the border of the land, as though it were to see whether they would I’eform or no before He would again enter in amongst them. But when on long trial it proved that they never were like to appear worthy that He should be with them, at length David, a great typical Mediator, appeared. God for his sake came into the midst of the land, and chose Him a place in Israel “to put His name there,” and took up His settled abode there, and instead of a tent dwelt in a temple. God speaks of it to David as an instance of His peculiar favour to him, that He now at length consented to settle His abode; that He had never moved any such thing before. David had spoken of having a house built for him, (2 Sam. vii.,) and God there declares that for his sake He would shew favour to Israel, and would plant them that they might dwell in a place of their own, &c.; and it is often mentioned afterwards as the reason why He did not cast off” Israel. This is another instance of God’s deferring the accomplishment of that which, by the manner of prediction, was expected to be accomplished immediately upon their being settled in their own land, (see note on chap. xi. 2-i, supra) for David seemed to expect an immediate accomllishment of the glorious things that were to be brought in by the Messiah on the return of the Jews from Babylon, (see Deut. ix. 23, 24.) So the primitive Christians seemed to expect Christ’s last coming to accompany the destruction of Jerusalem.

78. Deut. XV. 9 — “Sin unto thee.”] Sin here is put for calamity, misery, or ruin, because that is the consequence of sin. Thus the word sin is often used in Scripture. So Deut. xxiv. 15, xxiii. 21, 22; 1 Kings xii. 30, xiii. 13, 34; Ps. cix. 7; Prov, x. 16. So probably it is to be understood, Prov. xxiv. 9; see also Hosea viii. 11. So iniquity is a wxird often used in like manner in Scripture to signify both sin and its punishment, both moral evil and natural evil, or misery and destruction.

79. Deut. xviL 14, 1 5.] In what is said here about a king we have a plain instance of God’s suffering the people to do that which yet He did not approve of, parallel to the instance Christ mentioned. Matt. xix. 8. For when the people did the very tln’ng here spoken of, when they said, “7 luill set’’’ &c., God manifested His great disapprobation of it, (1 Sam. viii. 6-8, and xii. 16-19.)

80. Deut. XX. 19 — “For the tree of the field is man’s life,” &c.] It might have been rendered much more agreeable to the original, “For man is a tree of the field.” It was God’s will that a fruitful tree should not be cut down, but only trees that yielded uo meat. Because trees with respect to their bareness or fruitfulness represented man, and therefore he would have men deal with them as He deals with men. This is an argument in the Law of Moses itself, that its commands were given from some typical respect.

81. Deut. xxi. 23.] The manner of the Israelites in pursuance of this institution used to be to let them hang till the sun was down, and then to take the bodies down and bury them, as is evident by Joshua viii. 29, and x. 26, 27. Grod did not see meet that that which was a curse and execration should remain in open sight for an abomination to the pure eyes of the God that dwelt in that holy land. They were therefore to remove such abominable things out of God’s sight, that God might dwell and walk in the land, and not withdraw from it, (see Deut. xxiii. 13, 14.) But it is very probable that one reason why those that were hanged and accursed were to be taken down and buried as soon as the sun was down, was that the sun was a type of Christ, and in setting was a type of that death of Christ, (Luke xxiii. 44.) The cm-se was to be removed and buried as soon as the sun was set, to signify that the curse is removed by the death of Christ; for He in dying was made a cm-se for us, and that curse by His death is taken from the earth, or at least from the land of Israel, or the land of the Church, so that that land is not defiled. God’s people have not the curse remaining amongst them to render them abominable to God, and to cause Him to depart from them. Their sins and abominations are buried for ever out of His sight by Christ’s death. Indeed it was so ordered that the body of Christ, though it was hanged on a tree, was taken down and buried before sunsetting; the Jews took it down before, that it might not remain in the open air on the sabbath-day, (John viii. 31.) This seems to be so ordered, because Christ, though made a curse, was not such a curse as was removed by what was typified by the setting of the sun, but He was the antitype itself.

82. Deut. xxxii. 2.] God here speaks to the people quite in a different manner fi-om what He did at Mount Sinai, when He spake to them out of the midst of the fire, with a great and terrible voice that was not suited to their tender frame, and that exceedingly terrified them, and was ready to destroy them. God’s word then was like thunder and lightning and devouring fire, overbearing and consuming so frail and tender a creature as man, who is like the grass and flower of the field. God’s voice is now gentle, delivered in a pleasant song; and instead of being like lightning to destroy and consume, is like the gentle showers and refreshing dew to the tender grass, instructing, reproving, warning, revealing not only His will, but His great mercy, in a manner adapted to man’s tender frame. There is much of the glorious gospel in this song, and even the warnings and threatenings that are in it are delivered in an evangelical manner, much in the same way that they were delivered by the gentle voice of the glorious Messiah. All the songs of Scripture are the voice of the gospel. The glorious things of the gospel are their foundation and subject-matter, and therefore in them God’s word drops as the rain, &c.

83. Deut. xxxii. 5 — “Their spot,” &c.] In all probability here is a reference had to those spots mentioned in Lev. xiii., where are rules for the trials of spots, whether they were leprous spots or no. There are many spots there mentioned that something resembled the leprosy, notwithstanding which the diseased person was to be pronounced clean, and might still be looked upon as of the congregation of Israel, and allowed the privileges of such. But if the spot was upon trial found to be a leprosy, he was to be separated from the congregation, — his spot was not the spot of God’s people, and he was not to be looked upon as one of them.

84. Deut. xxxii. 14.] It is a further evidence that God intended wine, which is the juice of the gi’ape squeezed or pressed out, to be a type of the blood of Christ shed imder His extreme sufferings as a sacrifice, that the word used in Gen. xl. 11 for pressing grapes in order to get thence wine, is the same that is used for killing or sacrificing. The chief butler, relating his dream, says he sweated or pressed the grapes into Pharaoh’s cup. Thus the word DPIii signifies to sacrifice, or to cut the throat, as they did in sacrificing, and is everywhere so used, as appears by the Hebr. Con., and this text is mentioned as the only exception where it is used to squeeze or press grapes, which is a good argument that the pressing of grapes was a type of the sufferings of Christ, [which were] the antitype of the sufferings and deaths of their sacrifices of old.

85. Deut. xxxiii. 2 — “From His right hand went a fiery Law for them.”] The words seem to be something wronged in the translation. The word ’ went ’ is not in the original, but is supplied, and if the word ‘proceeded’ or ‘come’ had been supplied, it might more naturally have led us to what Moses had respect, which seems to be God’s writing the Law with His right hand on the two tables of stone, and then delivering them with His right hand thus engraven, to be for the people, as He did the two first tables that were the workmanship of God; and also the other two that Moses had made were delivered to Moses out of God’s hand after He had written the Law on them. But the sense seems to be wronged in the translation more in rendering the words, a “fiery Law for them:” the words in the original are “a fire of Law for them” — i.e., to be for a light to them, or as a fire to enlighten, as the pillar of fire was for a light to them in the night; for “the commandment is a lamp, and the Law is alight.” The same seems to be meant here as is expressed in Isa. IL 4 — “For a Law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people.” This last agrees with the foregoing words, wherein it is said that God “shined from Mount Paran;” and it is more natural to understand it thus, for it is said to be “for them.” It was a light to enlighten them; it is more natural to say it is “for them” than if it were a fire threatening to consume them. And this sense much the best agrees with the following verses, and their evident connexion with these words which speak of God’s great love and grace in giving them this Law, and how it was given as an inheritance to them, and with what pleasure and delight they received it: “Yea, He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand: and they sat down at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words. Moses commanded us a Law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.”

86. Deut. xxxiii. 7.] So David was brought to his people as their prince after being driven out and banished by Saul, and again after he was driven out by Absalom. Solomon was brought to his people after he was excluded by Adonijah. Christ was brought to His people to be their King after the family of David had long been excluded from the throne by the power of the four monarchies and by other enemies. Christ, after He was thrown away by the Jews, was brought to have a place in the building, and to be the head of the corner. He will be brought to His people again, after He has been long as it were driven away by Antichrist, and He will come to His people at the end of the world for their most complete and eternal salvation, after being driven out by Satan operating on Gog and Magog, and after all the instances of His expulsion and exclusion by all His enemies through all ages of the world.

87. Deut. xxxiii. 8.] Here Christ is evidently called Levi’s “holy one.” Aaron, the high priest of that tribe, was Levi’s holy one in some sense; but it was not Aaron but Christ that was tempted at Massah and Meribah. (1 Cor. x. 9.) Moses was of that tribe, and might also be called their holy one; but neither was he the person there tempted, yea, both Moses and Aaron there rather concurred in the temptation, (Num. xx. 10-13;) and the great antitype of Moses and Aaron, the true High Priest, that was the substance and end of all the ancient sacrifices and offerings, and of all the peculiar ministrations of the high priest of the tribe of Levi, according to Jer. xxxiii. 17-22, Christ may well be called Levi’s “holy one;” for it is there represented as though the great honour and privilege of Levi, in its having the office of the priesthood, should be upheld and completed in Christ. For all the honour and privilege which there ever was in having the priesthood of their tribe, arose from the relation of that priesthood to Christ, and the glorious things which He should accomplish in His sacrifice and intercession, and the eternal benefits He should procure; and therefore the actually existing and appearing of Christ, the great and true High Priest, and actually accomplishing those glorious things, and procuring those eternal benefit.s, are the sum and substance and perfection of all the honour and privilege which belonged to their office. And therefore this is properly mentioned in Moses’s blessing of this tribe. Por it shews this privilege above all other things, inasmuch as herein it appears that their priesthood was no vain thing. It was unspeakably valuable, and of infinitely good effect, as it stood in relation to the priesthood of Christ, and should be brought to its glorious and infinitely blessed effect in Him. It was by the Thummim and Urim that the high priest was especially furnished with to enter into the holy of holies, to make atonement and intercession for the people there once a year, and was enabled to teach the people, and reveal the mind and will of God to them. But this typical Thummim and Urim were nuthinii; but as they relate to and were typical of the perfections, merits, light, and glory that were in Christ. In Christ having this perfection, glory, and merit, and this sufhciency to be the light of the world, Levi’s Tlunnmim and Urim were fulfilled, and so honoured and magnified. That spoken of and promised concerning the priests, the Levites, in Jer. xxxiii. 17-22, is manifestly the chief of all blessings of God’s Covenant with that tribe; as that which was promised in the first place concerning the house of David is the chief thing jDromised in God’s Covenant with David, which is a thing that much confirms that this is the great thing here intended in Moses’s blessing of this tribe.

88. Deut. xxxiii. 12.] i.e., Benjamin, being the beloved of the Lord, shall dwell in safety by the Lord. Paul the great Apostle was of this tribe, who perhaps was above all mere men the beloved of the Lord.

89. Ibid.] Which seems to allude to a custom of parents carrying their children on their backs or between their shoulders, agreeable to the custom of the Indians here in America. The same thingseems to be alluded to again in Isa. xlix. 22, and perhaps also in the parable of the lost sheep in Luke xv. o.

90. Deut. xxxiii. 18, 19.] This seems to have respect to the calling of the Gentiles by the preaching of the Apostles, who were of Galilee, and probably chiefly of the tribe of Zebulon, which was that part of Galilee where Christ was chiefly conversant. It is evident the mountain here meant is the mountain of the House of the Lord, the place of offering sacrifice; and the event referred to by their calling the people to the mountain seems to be that prophesied of, Isa. ii. 2, and xxvii. 13. The great trumpet shall be blown, and the offering sacrifices of righteousness, &c., is the same with that spoken of, Isa. Ix. 7, 20; and this seeking the abundance of the sea and treasures hid in the sand, seems to have reference to what is foretold in Isa. Ix. 5, 9, 16, and lxvi. 12. The success of the Apostles was chiefly in gathering the people that dwelt in the sea, or beyond the sea, called in prophecy the islands of the sea; and therefore as they were fishermen before their calling, and gathered the fulness of the sea for their food, so Christ, when He called them, told them He would make them “fishers of men” to gather the multitudes of men, that were, as it were, the inhabitants of the sea.

91. Deut. xxxiii. 26.] The universe is the chariot in which God rides and makes progress towards the last end of all things on the wheels of His providence; and the place of the chariot on which God has His seat is the highest heavens, as in Ps. lxviii. 33, and also ver. 4; the pavement of the chariot, above which God’s throne is, is the firmament or the sky, as Ezek. i. 25, 26. Therefore this verse signifies as much as that God governs the whole world for the good of His Church; the wheels of the chariot of the universe move for them, and the progress that God makes therein on His throne above the firmament, the pavement of His chariot, is for them, and every event in the universe is in subserviency to their help and benefit. — Corol. Hence it was meet that Christ, when He came to be invested with the government of the universe, as Head over all things to the Church, to govern the motions of this chariot, and make jjrogress on it for their help and salvktion, should ascend into the highest heavens above its pavement, to sit on the throne of this chariot; and therefore in Ps. lxviii., which is on the subject of Christ’s ascension, mention is made once and again of God’s riding on the heavens, as in verses 4 and 33. The underpart of the wheel of a chariot seems to run backward, but it is not so; the whole machine is constantly moving forward towards the journey’s end. So when the Church of God is brought low in the world, it is like that j)art of the wheel that is brought next the ground. The course of things seems to be backward and away from the proposed and promised end; but it is a mistake, God is still constantly making progress towards the Church’s promised glory.

92. Deut. xxxiii. 29 — “Thine enemies,” &c.] — i.e., liars in their boastings and menaces; [” and thou shalt tread,” &c.] — i.e., their fortresses built upon high rocks and steep places — that is, thou shalt conquer and take their strongest places, and take possession of them, God is said to be a high place, (Ps. ix. 9, and xlvi. 7,) — i.e., a fortress or refuge.

98. Deut. xxxiv. 5.] Moses brought the children of Israel into the wilderness and to the very border of Canaan, but carried them no further; there he left them, and it was not Moses, but Joshua or Jesus, that carried them over Jordan and brought them into Canaan, to the promised rest, and gave them possession of the land flowing with milk and honey, which seems to signify to us that we can never obtain heaven or saving blessings by the Law. Moses, who gave the Law, seems here to signify the Law; the Law brings persons into the wilderness, — that is, can bring souls under conviction, — and so leads them on into the wilderness. It carries along in that work — that is, preparatory to saving grace and comfort — even till they are brought to a next preparation for conversion and comfort, but there it leaves them. It can bring them no further; it cannot bring them over Jordan into a state of salvation, that must be done by Jesus or the spiritual Joshua. All the use of the LaAV is to lead men on in their wilderness travel, and when it has done that, and brought them to the border of Canaan, and to a next preparedness for a state of salvation, there it dies. John says, “The Law was given by ]Ioses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” (John i. 17, and Heb. vii. 19.)

JOSHUA.

94. Joshua i. 2.] As soon as ever Moses is dead, God commands Joshua or Jesus to lead the people over Jordan. So as soon as ever men through the Law are dead to the Law, they are fitted for the comforts of Canaan. When Moses or the Law, our first husband, is dead, we are at liberty to be married to a risen Saviour, and so to be brought to the possession of Canaan, that is His inheritance.

95. Joshua ii. 18, 19.] Faith is made the condition of Rahab’s kindred, as well as her own. They were to retire to Uahab’s house, and not stir out, which they would not have done unless they had believed that God would indeed deliver that city and Land into the hand of the children of Israel as He had said, and would destroy their enemies and save their friends. As in the old world they that believed that God would destroy the world as He had said, lied to the ark; and in Egypt they that believed that God would accomplish what He had said concerning the hail and fire, retired to their houses beforehand and were saved. And in Jerusalem they that believed what Christ had said about Jerusalem’s destruction fled out at the signal that Christ gave them, and were saved. And in Jerusalem’s first destruction they that believed that God would destroy the city, as He had said by the prophet Jeremiah, went and submitted themselves to the king of Babylon, and were saved. Rahab, as she was the [type of the] mother of Christ, so her house in this case was a type of the Church, or of the house, the habitation and fortress of the Church, Christ Jesus, where the righteous dwell in safety, and where they must hide themselves till the indignation be overpast, and from whence they must not depart, but must be found in Him at the hour when judgment comes, in order to their being saved. Ver. 20. It was needful that Rahab should keep counsel in this matter, lest they should be betrayed when they were gone, or lest others should tie scarlet lines in their- windows.

96. Joshua iv. 1 G.] The Lake of Sodom, into which Jordan emptied itself, was a type of hell on many accounts. The fire by which Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbouring cities were destroyed is expressly called eternal fire. The river Jordan, (that was a swift river,) whose waters were constantly and swiftly flowing into that Lake, represents the continued flowing of multitudes (that are in Scripture often called ’ waters ‘) into hell. The Lake of Sodom was never full though these waters incessantly flowed into it. So hell is never satisfied. The waters must be supposed to have some subterraneous passage from that Lake, by which they were, as it were, sucked down into the lower parts of the earth, and, as it were, into hell, which makes the type more lively. These waters shall be in a great measure cut off when our Jesus or Joshua comes to bring His spiritual Israel into Canaan at the latter day, by that work which was an antitype of this work of Joshua that we have an account of in this Book. Then shall the great stream that constantly flowed down to hell fail. This shall be at the time of God’s spiritual harvest, spoken of in Rev. xiv. As Joshua’s bringing the people through Jordan was at the time of harvest, just before the waters were thus cut off by Joshua, [when they] flowed in more than ordinary plenty, it being a time when Jordan overflowed all its banks. So just before

Christ shall do this for His Church in the latter day, it will be a time of great wickedness and depravacy. Secondly, These sweet waters of Jordan represent the means of grace, which was one thing represented by Ezekiel’s waters of life. So [also] the waters of Jordan represented [this] in healing Naaman’s leprosy. And the Lake of Sodom in this case represents the same as those ’ miry places and marshes ’ in Ezekiel’s vision that were given to salt, never to be healed by the living waters, however constantly and plentifully flowing by them. Therefore the waters being cut off when Joshua comes, represents the awful judgment of God on reprobates who had long abused means of grace; when Christ shall come, these means which they have enjoyed shall be taken from them. They shall be miserably destroyed, and all streams of mercy shall be cut off from them. Lastly, This river flowing into the Lake of Sodom represents the supplies of the kingdom of Satan, and especially the Church of Rome, that is spiritually called Sodom, and so represents the same that the river Euphrates did in old Babylon. These shall be dried up when the spiritual Joshua shall come. Thus the sixth vial was poured out on the great river Euphrates, and the waters thereof were dried up, that the way of the kings of the East might be prepared. As there the river Euphrates represents two things that the literal river Euphrates was to old Babylon — viz., its supply and defence — so here Jordan, to Sodom and the Land about, used formerly to be a supply when it was well watered everywhere, as the “garden of the Lord,” and now was a supply to the Lake of Sodom; but to Jericho, another type of the kingdom of Satan, it was a defence. It is evident that the destruction of Jericho was a remarkable type of the destruction of Satan’s kingdom by the spiritual coming of Christ in the latter days. The dividing Jordan therefore, to make way for the enemies of Jericho to come from the East and destroy, was eminently a type of the same thing that is accomplished by pouring out the sixth vial.

97. Ver. 17 — “And the city shall be a thing devoted, even it and all that is therein, to the Lord.”] So the words might have been rendered. This was the first city that was taken, the first-fruits of their conquest, and therefore fitly devoted to God. Hereby the whole land was consecrated to God. For “if the first-fruits be holy, the lump is also holy,” (Rom. xi. 16.)

98. Joshua v. 2.] This was the second general circumcision of the congregation. The first was probably before the Passover they kept in Egypt while they had peace in Egypt, (as Mr Henry says, “They doubtless,” &c., down to “was interrupted.”) But before the Passover, the night before they went out of Egypt they were doubtless generally circumcised, because it* was then most strictly commanded that no uncircumcised person should eat the Passover. As now, this general circumcision in Gilgal was at the same time of year, just before they kept the Passover. (See chap. iv. 10, and the 10th verse of this chapter.)

99. Joshua v. 4, 6, 7 — Concerning their not circumcising the chil-Jrcn that were born in the wildovncss.] Considering the plainness of the precept of circumcision and the strictness of the injunction, and that no great stress was hiid upon it, and that it was so expressly conuuanded that no uucircunicised person should eat of the Passover, which was with great strictness and often commands required most watchfully and diligently and without fail to be kept every year, and considering that the congregation in the wilderness was under Moses’s government, — I say, considering these things, it is unaccountable that all the children that were born for thirty-eight years together should not be circumcised, imless it was omitted by Divine direction. Some think God favourably dispensed with the omission on consideration of the unsettledness of their state and their frequent removes, and that stirring the children might be dangerous to them while they were sore. This reason is generally acquiesced in, but does not seem to be satisfactory. For sometimes they stayed a year in a place, (Num. ix. 22), if not much longer, and in their removes their little children though sore might be wrapped so warm and carried so easy as to receive no damage, and might certainly be much better accommodated than the mothers in travaQ or lying in. Therefore it rather seems to have been a continued token of God’s displeasure against them. Circumcision was originally a seal of the promise of the land of Canaan. But when God had sworn in His wrath concerning the men of war that came out of Egypt that they should be consumed in the wilderness and never enter Canaan, as that sentence is here repeated, (ver. 6,) relation being thereunto had, (it seems to be here brought in as giving the reason of the omission.) As a further ratification of that sentence, and to be a constant memorandum of it to them, all that fell under that sentence and were to fall by it were forbidden to circumcise their children; (or rather, I should think, Moses, as the prophet of God, immediately under the Divine direction, was restrained from putting them upon it, was ordered to let them alone and leave them to their own negligent and disobedient hearts in this afiair.) “This was such a significant indication of God’s wrath as the breaking of the tables of the Covenant was, when Israel had broke Covenant by making the golden calf,” [Henky.] It is probably they who generally omitted keeping the Passover from the pronouncing of the sentence in Num. xiv. until now; for they never would have been tolerated in keeping the Passover from year to year in uncircumcision. The keeping of the Passover here seems to be mentioned as being now a new thing among them as well as circumcision. This gives light unto what is said in ver. 9. God suffering them judicially to continue in uncircumcision for so long a time like the Euyptians, where their fathers for a long time had many of them lived in uncircumcision for their hankering after Egypt, and going about to make them a captain to return to Egypt, was a continuing of them under the reproach of Egypt, which reproach was now rolled away. ]Ioses had told them, while they were in the plains of Moab, (Deut. xii. 8,) that when they came into the land of Canaan they should not do as they did then, every man what was right in his own eyes, which confirms that the omission of circumcision, the Passover, and other Divine institutions, was not from a Divine prohibition, but rather from a judicial leaving them to themselves, (Amos v. 25.)

100. Joshua vii. 12.] God had often made absolute promises of the Land of Canaan, but yet here the fulfilment of these promises is suspended upon the condition of obedience. So eternal life is absolutely promised to believers, but yet we often find the fulfilling of that promise suspended on then’ persevering obedience.

101. Joshua X. 12.] Gibeon was the place that the sun appeared to stand over at that time in the place where Joshua then was; and the valley of Ajalon the place which the moon, which was also then visible, appeared standing over. Now was a remarkable fulfilment of those words of Job, chap. ix. 7 — “Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars;” which words are a confirmation that the sun, moon, and stars all stopped as to their diurnal motion by the staying the revolution of the earth about its axis. In the song of Deborah it is said the “stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” The angels are called stars. Christ is often compared to the sun. Here we have all the heavenly hosts — the sun, moon, and all the stars — standing still to fight against the enemies of God’s people, representing that Christ and all the heavenly host of saints (constituting the heavenly Church represented by the moon) and all the angels are fighting against the enemies of the Church. Hereby is typified that which is represented in prophecy. (Rev. xix.)

The moon’s standing still. This proves the truth of the history, for a circumstance of the sun’s standing still being caused by staying the earth’s diurnal revolution is mentioned, though the occasion of such a circumstance must be wholly unknown in those days to the Jews, which argues the truth of the fact; for nothing but the real fact (the means of which was wholly unknown) could have put this into the head of the historian.

102. Joshua XV. 82.] And yet here are thirty-eight names. The probable reason why in the summing them up they are reckoned but twenty-nine is this: — The other nine were afterwards set off to another tribe — viz., the tribe of Simeon — viz., Beersheba, Maladah, Hazar-shual, Azem, Eltolad, Hormah, Ziklag, Remmon, and Eder or Ether.

JUDGES.

103. Judges V. 14.] This shadows forth the great hand that authors shall have in the great and last battle that the Church shall have with her enemies, of which that about which is this song, was a type.

104. Judges ix. 45.] The end of sowing the place with salt was not to make it barren, for it was a city not a field that is spoken of.

But this action seems to have been used in those days as symbolical to signify the curse of being perpetually desolate. It was an open solemn declaration that they devoted the place thus sowed with salt to everlasting desolation and emptiness. Probably it came to be thus used from what was observed of the providence of God with respect to Sodom and the cities and country round about, that were effectually devoted to perpetual desolation by being covered with the Dead Sea.

105. Judges xi. 24.] The land which the Amorites now possessed was a land that they had taken from others — viz., from the Zamzummims. (Dent. ii. 20, 21.) They had been extraordinarily assisted to prevail against and drive out this people, though a very mighty and gigantic people. This they ascribed to Chemosh their god, and they therefore thought they had a good title to the land, seeing their god had given it to them.

106. Judges xiii. 18 — “Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?” (= wonderful.) ] This argues that this is the same person spoken of in chap. ix. of Isa. ver. 6 — “To us a child,” &c., “Wonderful,” which is the same word in the original that is here rendered ’ secret;’ and what is said in ver. 20 further argues it. [See note on Isa. ix. 6.] What is here said about the name of this person, compared with Prov. xxx. 4, argues that it was the Son of God. (See also Rev. xix. 12; Gen. xxxii. 29.)

RUTH.

107. Kuth iv. 14 — “Kinsman.”] The kinsman here meant is the child now born, as appears by this and next verse, especially the last word of the next verse, and by the name they gave the child — Obed, (ver. 17,) signifying serving.

I. AND II. SAMUEL.

108. 1 Sam. ii. 8.] It is probable that what was especially called the throne of glory was the throne of God in the Tabernacle and Temple, on which the glory of the Lord abode and where it appeared. Christ who dwelt there was the glory of the Lord, and was called simply ‘glory,’ (1 Sam. iv. 21, 22; Ps. bcxxv. 9; Haggai ii. 7; Jer. xvii. 12.) In the original it is “a high throne of glory.”

109. 1 Sam. iii. 1.] Henky in he, “There.” From this time it began to be otherwise. There was “open vision.” “And all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord,” (ver. 20, chap, iv, 1.)

110. 1 Sam. V. 4.] The Bible and other remains of the true relioion that were kept in the Church of Rome, the Antichristian Church, will at length be the occasion of the fall of their Dagon and of the breaking of his head and hands. When Antichrist falls there will be a remainder of him yet; but he shall be utterly despoiled of strength and glory. He will be like a stump without head or hands.

111. 1 Sam. xii. 11.] This Bedan seems to be the same with Jair the Gileadite of whom we read, (Judges x, 3, 4,) for this Bedan was a Gileadite, as appears by 1 Chron. vii. 17. But Jair was the only Gileadite that judged Israel, except Jephthah, who judged Lsrael next to him, and is mentioned next to him in this verse.

112. Ibid., ver. 15.] There is in this and the foregoing verse an opposition between being after the Lord, as in the foregoing, — i.e., having God going before them and leading them as their Captain and Saviour, — and God’s being their enemy, or the hand of God, its being against them.

lis. 1 Sam. XXV. 26.] The sense is, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, seeing the Lord Himself hath withholden thee from commg to shed blood, and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, God Himself will certainly avenge thee and will take him away, as I desire that God would take away all thine enemies. It is a strong expression of assurance concerning a future event such as we have in the next chapter ver. 10.

1 14. 2 Sam. i. 17.] David’s behaviour on occasion of the death of Saul his (see verses 11, 12) grand persecutor, who long sought his life, and whose death was so much to his advantage, together with the spirit he shewed on other occasions of love and meekness and forgiveness towards those that injured him, do greatly confirm that the imprecations we have in his Psalms on his persecutors, of whom Saul was the chief, are not the expression of a spirit of private revenge, but imprecations he put up in the name of Christ as Head of the Church against His and His Church’s enemies, and what he spake as a prophet in the name of the Lord. Observe, also, his behaviour with respect to the death of Abner and Amasa. By this also we may see what is the spirit of true religion, how it disposes persons to overlook and hide the worst faults of their worst enemies, and [to] speak the best of them and lament their calamities. See note on Ps. lix. 13, and on Job xxxi. 30.

115. 2 Sam. vii. 10.] God’s ceasing to walk in a tent and tabernacle, and dwelling in a temple, was a great token of mercy to the children of Israel; for while God dwelt in a movable tabernacle. He dwelt as a wayfaring man, as one that was not fixed in His abode, was ready to depart, that is, to stay but a little while, or that is undetermined whether to stay or no. But when He came to dwell in a temple, — that is, a fixed habitation, — it was a token for good several ways. It was a token that God would dwell among them, and make His settled abode among them, and that He would not lead them forth out of the Land, but continue them in the possession of it, for they were to go where the tabernacle went before them; but now dwelt in an immovable temple, it wa.s a token that they should no more be removed. It was a token that God would not cast them off from being His people; for if He should do so, He would remove them out of that Land, for the Land was His Land, a Land that He had chosen to be a holy Land.

11(5. 2 8am. vii. 20.] i.e., What can he desire more of Thee, or pray for more to Thee I — that this is the meaning is evident by 1 Chron. xvii. 18, where it is thus expressed, “What can David,” &c., — [” for Thou, Lord,” &c.] — i.e., Thou hast chosen Thy servant. God’s knowledge is here put for election, as often elsewhere. God’s election is mentioned as the ground of these great and admirable favours. The words that follow in the next verse confirm this verse.

117. 2 Sam. vii. 21 — “For Thy woed’s sake, and according to Thine own heart.”] In 1 Chron. xvii. 19 it is, “For Thy servant’s sake, and according to Thine own heart,” which confirms that by the “word” here is meant Christ, who appeared in the form of a servant, and is often, by way of eminency, called God’s ’ servant.’ [See Pool, Synop. in Zoc]

118. 2. Sam. x. 10.] Which armament is 7000 men, ten to a chariot, so this place is reconciled with 1 Chron. xix. 18, (see Pool on 1 Chron. xix. 18.)

I. AND II. KINGS.

119. J Kings ii. 37.] This may help us to understand God’s threatening to Adam, when He said, “In the day,” &c. When Solomon thus threatc’ied Shimei, we cannot naturally understand any more by it than that death should be certain to him from that day: he should stand guilty of death, obliged to die by a fixed unalterable establishment. We cannot suppose that Solomon concluded that, if he did go over the brook Kedron, he should hear of it so as to execute this threatening on that very day. As it proved that he did not, it seems to have been some time after before the threatening was executed. See note on Gen. ii. 17.

120. 1 Kings viii. 56.] So long was it before God fully gave Israel that rest in Canaan which He had promised them by the hand of Moses, which may make us the less to wonder that many of those great things that were promised by Christ to His Church, and spoken of by His Apostles relating to the kingdom of heaven, and the glory that Church should receive at Christ’s coming in that kingdom, as to their more full accomplishment should be so long delayed.

121. 1 Kings xi. 5-7.] It does not appear that Solomon did himself worship these strange gods. But what his wives persuaded him to, was to build high places for them to worship their gods in: he probably went after other gods only as he honoured them so far as to build places for their public worship in the land of Israel, wherein his wives and their attendants might worship them. For it is said in ver. 8 he did this “for his wives,” &c. He might possibly think it but reasonable that his wives should be allowed the exercise of their own religion and the worship of their own gods, and might think it hard, seeing he had brought them out of their own country, to deny them high places and altars at which they might worship them in his country.

122. 1 Kings xiii. 31, 32.] The old prophet orders that his corpse might be laid in the sepulchre of the man of God, and his bones by that prophet’s bones, that so they might not be disturbed, and burnt on the altar of Bethel by Josiah. This is implied as the reason he gives himself in ver. 32, and so the event was: the bones that were laid in that sepulchre were not disturbed by Josiah, (2 Kings xxiii. 17.)

123. 1 Kings xiv. 14, 15.] It is God’s manner in Scripture, when threatening the wicked for their sins, to pass from those judgments that are soon to be inflicted, and are the more immediate, and which are the occasion of God’s sending a messenger to threaten them, to some great remote judgments, of which perhaps the judgments more immediately threatened are images or forerunners. Thus when God first sent Moses to Pharaoh, He sent him with a threatening of the last and greatest plague; and the other foregoing plagues are all omitted. (Exod. iv. 22, 23.) So in chap. ix. ver. 15, God again threatens the last plague and Pharaoh’s own destruction, that was accomplished in the Red Sea; though there was the plague of hail, and locusts and darkness afterwards, before the plague of pestilence. So here, when the wife of Jeroboam comes to the prophet to enquire whether her son shall live, the prophet passes from a threatening of his death and judgment suddenly to be inflicted on his family, to the captivity of the ten tribes, though it was to be long after Jeroboam’s death. So also it is the manner of the prophets, when sent on some particular occasions to promise some mercy to God’s people, to insist on some greater mercy that is remote, and that is to be bestowed on God’s people in after generations. Thus when Isaiah was sent to Ahaz, when Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, were combined against him, to comfort him by foretelling the disappointment of their enemies and deliverance of Judah, he comes to Ahaz with Shear-jashub, his son, that signifies the “remnant shall return,” to foretell the return from the captivity to Babylon, as in Isa. vii. And it is very frequent with the prophets, when foretelling lesser mercies that God has to bestow on His people, to pass to and insist upon that greatest of all mercies, the coming of Christ. So did Isaiah, when He came to Ahaz on the forementioned occasion. (Isa. vii. 14.) So the prophets, when foretelling the return from the Babylonish captivity, often insist on the redemption of Christ, of which this is a type. So do the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, when sent to encourage the people to build the Temple, with promises of mercies therein, insist chiefly on the prosperity that God will give the Church in the times of the gospel.

124). 1 Kinos xviii. 33-35.] Elijah’s sacrifice, in the time wherein it was offered, was attended with the greatest obstacles to its bein*; consumed by fire. God, who has more ends than one in what He does, probably did not only intend by this to shew His power beyond that of Baal, but to represent what came to pass with respect to the sacrifice of Christ, the great antitype of all the ancient sacrifices, Whose last Suffering was attended with such circumstances as seemed to tend in the highest degree to hinder His going on to offer Himself, in the heavenly flames of Divine charity, and voluntarily presenting Himself to suffer the flames of Divine wrath. Such was God’s hiding of His face from Him, and dealing with Him in some resjDects as if He had been an enemy, which was a gTeat trial of His love to the Father, and tending like floods of water to quench the fire of Divine love in His soul, and to prevent that great degree of it which was necessary to carry Him through the extreme sufferings that were before Him; and also the extraordinary view which Christ had then given Him of the unworthiness of mankind for whom He died, the hateful nature of their sin that He was about to expiate by His extreme sufferings, and their great enmity against Him, which was then set before Him and exercised towards Him, in the contempt and cruelty of His enemies. And some of them the very persons that He was about to die for; and the ingratitude of His own disciples, that had already received the saving benefits of His death, in their coldness towards Him in the times of His agony, — their being unwilling to watch with Him one hour — their all forsaking Him when He was apprehended — Peter denying Him with oaths and curses. These were like floods of great waters that were then thrown upon Him to cpiench His love, and to prevent His going on to endure those extreme torments in the fire of God’s wrath; as was also that extraordinary view that was given Him beforehand of the cup He was to drink, which made His soul exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. But “many waters could not quench His love, nor could the floods drown it.” (Song of Solomon viii. 7.)

125. 1 Kings xix. 20, 21.] “See Matt. xxiv. 17, 18. The truth with respect to what is related in these verses probably was thus: — Elijah was directed by the Spirit of God to cast his mantle on Elisha; but Elijah had not the design of God in it fully made known to him, supposing it to be intended as a sign that Elisha should be a prophet after him, agreeable to what God had said to him at Llouut Sinai. But God had a further meaning in it, which was intimated by His Spirit, which went with Elijah’s mantle to Elisha — viz., that he should immediately forsake all and follow him, and devote himself to the work of the ministry in the business of a prophet. Elisha, supposing Elijah had this design of God made known to him, and had been directed to cast his mantle on him with this view, and finding at first a reluctance and desire of Elisha that he by his prayers would obtain leave of God that he should first kiss his father and mother; Elijah, surprised at this request, as is natural, supposing him thus ignorant, says, “Go back: for what have I done that should hinder it?” However, Elisha, who understood the mind of God, soon recovered from his reluctance and went no further back than to his oxen, and took them and the instruments and offered up all to God, signifying by this action his full consent to forsake all and make a sacrifice of all this world’s yossessions and concerns to the great and infinitely important designs of his ministry.

126. 1 Kings xxii. 19 —” And all the host of heaven standing by Him.’ ] Here we may observe that they under the Old Testament were sensible of a multitude of inhabitants in the heavenly world as well as now, since another worM has been more fully revealed by the gospel.

127. 2 Kings ii. 9.] Elijah was now about to leave the world, and as parents, when they are leaving the world, are wont to bequeath portions to their children, so Elijah asks Elisha what he shall bequeath to him. Elisha was as it were his child, and calls him father. (Ver. 12.) That portion that he desires to inherit from his father is his spirit, and he desires a double portion of it — i.e., a much larger portion than the rest of his children, as it was ordained that the eldest son should inherit a double portion. (Deut. xxi. 17.) It was his birthright to have the best share of his father’s estate. Elijah had many other children besides Elisha. There were many sons of the prophets that were under Elijah’s care and instruction, so that he was as it were a father among them as afterwards Elisha was, as is evident by chap. iv. 38, and chap. vi. 42. Now what Elisha desires is that he may be distinguished from all the rest of the children by having a double portion of his spirit bequeathed to him. For Elijah’s estate did not consist in silver and gold, but in those gifts of the Spirit which he possessed. So that he was about to give something he miffht say of as Peter. (Acts iii. 6.) He asked a double portion of this, and to be made the main heir of those blessed spiritual gifts which he had, which was accordingly granted him.

1 28. 2 Kings v. 17 — “Two mules’,” &c.] See Bedford, “Scripture Chron.,” p. 627. Thus though he would not allow before that the waters of Israel were better than the waters of Damascus, yet, having been convinced by experience of his error in that, he now easily conceives that the earth of the land of Israel is better than that of Damascus.

129. 2 Kings xxi. 10-1.5.] It is evident by this, and many other passages of Scripture, that the first destruction of Jerusalem was principally for the sins of Manasseh and the wickedness that the people were guilty of in his reign, (see chap, xxiii. 26, 27, ami xxiv. 3, 4, and Jer. xv. 4;) and yet the first captivity in Jehoiakim’s time was not till about forty-four years after Manasseh’s death, and the total destruction of Jerusalem in Zedekiah’s time not till about fifty-five years after his death. Hence I would observe that it is no argument against the dreadful destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, its being an evident token of God’s wrath against the people for their rejecting and crucifying Christ, that that destruction happened about forty years after Christ’s crucifixion.

I. AND II. CHEONICLES.

130. 1 Chron. xi. 89 — “Zelek the Ammonite.”] Here one of David’s worthies is said to be an ‘Aiumonite,’ and another of them (ver. 4(5) a IMoabite, and yet in Deut. xxiii. 3 it is forbidden in the Law of Moses that an Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter into the congregation of the Lord. So Eutli was a Moabitess, but yet was received. By this it appears that evident piety prevailed for persons’ admission notwithstanding the Law. When the case was so, they were no longer Ammonites or INIoabites in the eye of the Law. By these things and many others, it appears that evangelical qualifications always prevailed over legal ones. So in the case of them that were legally unclean, that yet kept the Passover in Hezekiah’s time. (2 Chron. xxx. 17-20.)

131. 1 Chron. xxiii. 26.] Thus the Ceremonial Law was in part altered before Christ’s time. The service of the Levites by the Law of Moses consisted much in carrying the tabernacle, and vessels and instruments of it, (Num. iii. and iv.;) but when the Temple was built this service ceased, and was abrogated by David, there then ceasing to be occasion any longer for that work, and therefore David gave them new ordinances, and appointed them new work, which shews that the Ceremonial Law was alterable. If it may be altered in part, it may be altered in the whole; if David might abrogate some ordinances, Christ, the true David, might abrogate all, (Jer. iii. 16, 17, and Isa. lvi. 3, 4.) In 2 Chron. xxiii. 18, the ordinances of David are mentioned as of parallel validity with those of Moses, as a rule for their public worship. See note on Isa. li. 4.

132. 2 Chron. xii. 8.] i.e., That they may know the difference between my service and theirs. So the forbidden tree in Eden was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the experience of the one illustrated and shewed the value of the other. God wouM hereby let Judah know by their experience how much better His service was that they had forsaken and cast off, than the service of the kingdoms of the countries whose gods they had chosen.

133. 2 Chron xv. 17 — “But the high places were not taken away.”] i.e., Those that were used in the service of the true God, for Asa took away those which were used in idolatrous worship. (Chap. xiv. 3, 4.)

134. 2 Chron. xxxii. 31 — “That He might know all that was in his heart.”] By this, together with verses 25, 26, it appears that Hezekiah had much sin in his heart, though, as he pleads with God in the time of his sickness, he had walked before God in truth and with a perfect heart. See also 2 Kings xviii, 3, 5, C.

ESTHER.

135. Esther v. 2 — “Sceptre.”] Favour was offered by the king by holding out to her the golden sceptre; but it was expected that she, in order to a title and interest in the offered ftivour, should draw near and touch the top of the sceptre as an expression of her joyful acceptance of the favour, submission to the royal dominion and power, of which the sceptre was the ensign, and her dependence on the king’s free, sovereign but offered favour. The acts and benefits of saving faith in Christ may be compared to this act of Esther towards Ahasuerus, her king, her husband, and in this affair, and in what followed, her saviour.

JOB.

136. Job vi. 6.] Job was reduced to such necessity that he was forced to content himself with such insipid unsavoury morsels. This is the meaning, as appears by the next verse.

137. Job xiv, 22.] It is not unlikely that the Spirit of God in this has some respect to the misery of wicked men in a future state, when both soul and body shall be cast into hell. See Eccles. xi. 10.

138. Job xix. 25 — “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”] Though I shall die, and my flesh shall be destroyed with worms, [and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.] In the original it is, ‘He shall stand over the dust,’ “‘P^’^^ The word ’ earth ’ is very often used in the Book of Job, and the word is everywhere ’ eretz,’ and nowhere this word that properly signifies ’ dust.’ And it is not true that at the day of judgment Christ will properly stand on the earth. The meaning is this: — Christ will stand over the dust of the dead saints. [” My Redeemer.”] The word also as it was used among the Hebrews signified ‘near kinsman,’ as in Ruth iii. 12 — “And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman, [Goel,] howbeit there is a kinsman [goel] nearer than [I] [Goel.]” Ver. 13, “Tarry this night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, [or if he will redeem thee,] well; let him do the kinsman’s part: but if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then I will do the part of a kinsman to thee.” So the word is the same, 1 Kings xvi. 1 1 — “As soon as he began to reign, he slew all the house of Baasha; he left none of his kinsfolks.” There were four things the ’ goel ’ was to do for his kinsman unable to act for to himself: (1.) He was to marry the widow of the deceased kinsman raise up seed to his brother, as Christ marries the elect Church that was left a widow by the first Adam, the first surety, and by the Law or first covenant, the first husband, having no seed, (Rom. vii. 3, 4.) (2.) He was to redeem the inheritance of his poor kinsman, (Lev.

OLD TESTAMENT — JOr>. 1 1 3

XXV. 25.) So Christ redeems the inheritance which we sold. (3.) He was to ransom his poor kinsman in bondage, paying the price of his redemption. (Lev. xxv. 47, 48, 52.) Thus does Christ redeem us from bondage after we have sold ourselves. (4.) He was to avenge the blood of his slain kinsman on the slayer. Thus does Christ avenge our blood on Satan.

139. Job XX. 11.] Both these expressions import the same thing, and are as much as to say the sins of his youth remain with him after he is dead: his sin shall lie down with him in his grave, and shall remain in his dead corpse there when his flesh is putrefied and turned to dust. Then his iniquity shall still remain in his bones: his bones shall be full of them; which signifies that his sins shall for ever remain with him after he is dead: he shall never get rid of them, but they shall to all eternity lie upon him. (See Ezek. xxxii. 27.

140. Job xxiv. 23.] The words more literally translated are, “Though it be given him to be in safety, and he depends upon it, yet his eyes are upon their ways” — i.e., though God gives those wicked men that are so unjust to be in safety, and they, because God protects and preserves them for the present, depend on future safety, as though God took no notice of their wickedness and would never punish it, yet God’s eyes are upon their ways.

141. Job xxvi. 13 — “His hands have formed the crooked serpent.”] It might have been translated, “His hands have wounded or tormented the crooked serpent” — i.e., the devil. The word translated “formed” is the same that is used in ver. 5 — “■ Dead things are ’ formed ’ from under the waters,” [see in loc.’ That the devil, that old serpent, that great leviathan, shoidd be meant, agrees with the foregoing verse — “He divideth the sea with His power; by His understanding He smiteth through the proud,” which was remarkably fulfilled in dividing the sea and destroying Pharaoh, compared to leviathan, the water-monsters that are especially to be found in the waters of Egypt: Ps. lxxiv. 13, 14 — “Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the dragon in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,” where he is spoken of as the image of the devU; and this leviathan is called the “crooked serpent” in Isa.xxvii. 1 — “In that day,” &c., “the piercing serpent,” [as the serpent lying across like a bar, nahash bariach, the very same name used here,] “even leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” This is fitly subjoined to the former part of the verse — “By His Spirit He hath garnished [or beautified] the heavens.” For at the same time that God cast Satan down to hell He purged and also beautified heaven, increasing the holiness and happiness of His elect angels; and at every time of Christ’s remarkably overcoming Satan and bruising his head, is a beautifying heaven and advancing His holiness and happiness, as when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and when He shall destroy Antichrist, and at the end of the world; and it is not incredible that Job should here speak of such mysteries, for it is evident he now

H speaks under the influence of the Spirit of prophecy, by what he says in the preceding- verse concerning the dividing of the sea, &c,, fulfilled afterwards. This interpretation is confirmed by ver. 5 — “Dead things,” &c. Mr Henry observes that some ancient versions render the words thus: “Behold, the giants groan under the waters, and those that dwell with them;” or the words ought to have been rendered: “ReiDhaim are wounded and pierced through under the waters,” agreeable to the original. (See BuXTOEF.) “From under the water” seems to allude to the waters of the Flood, under which the giants were destroyed in God’s terrible wrath, which deluge of water was a remarkable type of the deluge of God’s wrath which comes on the ungodly in another world. The observing this is to Job’s piu’pose, for, as Mr Henry says, “is there anything in which the majesty of God appears more dreadful than in the eternal ruin of the ungodly, and the groans of the inhabitants of the land of wickedness?” Ver. 12 confirms this interpretation, and also ver. 13.

112. Job xxviii. 5 — “Under it is turned up as it were fire”] — i.e., that which shines like fire, as in Deut. xxxiii. 2. The Law of God, because it, as it were, shines and gives light, is called a “fiery Law.”

113. Job XXX. 24 — “Howbeit He will not stretch out His hand to the grave “] — i.e., to rescue men from death. Every man must die and be retained in the grave, — “the redemption of the life is precious, and it ceaseth for ever;” — God will recover man from thence to live again in this world, [though they cry in His destruction,] though they dread death never so much when death comes, and would never so earnestly cry to be delivered from the grave.

144. Job xxxi. 34 — “Did I fear?” &c.] In these early days great account was made of men’s pedigree, and they were kept with care; and when men’s lives were so long, great numbers of the dependents of one living ancestor were alive at once, so that those who were called a family were commonly a great multitude. Job declares that he was not deterred from doing justice in his oflice of a judge through fear of the great multitude that were of the family of him that was to be condemned or displeased in the judgment.

145. Job xxxiv. 20.] Remarkably fulfilled when the first-born were slain: as there are several things in this Book in which the Spirit that in the general directed in the forming of the speeches of Job and his friends, — either in them or others, which they answered these sayings from, — had respect to those great things which were accomplished when the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt and led to Canaan, (see chap. xxvi. 12, xxxviii. 22, 23, ix. 7.) [At midnight,] (see ver. 25, and chap, xxxvi. 20, xxvii. 20; Matt. xxv. 6; 1 Thess. v. 2.)...

146. Job xxxvi. 27, to end of the next chapter.] Elihu concludes his discourse with observations and improvements of God’s wondrous works in the clouds — rain, lightning, and thunder. It appears to me probable that the occasion of it was the appearance, at a distance, of the clouds and lightning and thunder of the storm that was then approaching, out of which God spake to Job. There was nothing in Elihu’s foregoino- discourse that seemed to lead him to it. It is true that he was, in the foregoing verses, speaking of the greatness of GoJ and His works; but there seems nothing that led him thus suddenly to begin about the clouds and rain in this 27th verse. But if tlicre then appeared to them a thunder-storm arising, that will easily account for it, why he, when speaking of God’s greatness, should insist on this rather than any other of God’s works. The 8()th verse of the XXXVItii chapter seems to confirm this — [” Behold,” &c.] The manner of expression, his calling on Job to ‘behold,’ agrees with the supposition that the thing was then appearing that he was speaking of, and the description here given, ‘He spreadeth His light upon it, and covereth the roots of the sea,’ as it is in the original, agrees exactly with the appearance of a thunder-storm appearing as arising above the horizon; for the top of the clouds, in such cases, is commonly all spread over with an exceeding bright light. Thus God spreads His light upon it; and the lower part of a storm that appears thus rising, seems to cover the utmost confines and extreme parts of the sea that are next the horizon, that are here called the “roots of the sea,” which may elegantly be so called according to the notion they then had of the world as being a flat, and that there was first the land and after that the sea, which they supposed was bounded by the horizon, or at the meeting of the firmament with the waters. He certainly here speaks of a thunder-storm as it is [seen] when rising and approaching, whether there was then one approaching or no. By the 30th and also the S2d and 33d verses, having first observed how the cloud appears on the top of it covered with light, and how the bottom covers the roots of the sea, he next observes how it is, as it advances higher and comes nearer, how the cloud interposes between the sun and the earth and hides its light, and how the thunder-storm grows louder, and the notice the cattle seem to shew of it; and in the beginning of the next chapter, Elihu seems to speak of what then appeared — “At this also my heart trembleth, and is moved out of its jDlace,” &c.; and it was not the only instance of God’s speaking out of a storm of thunder, for so He did at Mount Sinai, (Ps. lxviii. 8.) Pool, Synop. on chap, xxxviii. 1.

147. Ibid., ver. 29, 30.] Here the clouds are represented as being spread out over the concave of the heavens as the covering of a tabernacle, which come down as curtains and cover the utmost edge of the sea, which is the uttermost part of the pavement or ground of the tabernacle. Here the clouds are represented as one covering and the light another, spread out upon it, as in the Tabernacle built in the wilderness there were various coverings one without another. Elilni probably has respect to the cloud as it now appeared. The clouds of a thunder-storm, when rising, appear at top spread over with a bright light, and at the bottom covering the utmost ends of the earth or sea.

148. Job xl. 2-4.] Since Job had undertaken to find fault with God and His dispensations, and to desire an opportunity to dispute with Him, that he might argue the matter of the erroneousness of His dispensations with him, he is now called upon by God to ’ answer ’ to what He had said, and speak in his turn. But now Job declines it and owns he has nothing to answer — “Behold, I am vile,”

&c.

149. Job xli. 11 — “Who hath prevented Me, that I should repay him?”] These words are a great evidence that leviathan is here spoken of as a type of the devil. For no other leviathan was ever subject to God’s moral government, or ever rebelled against Him, that God should repay him.

PSALMS.

150. Ps. xi. G — “Snares.”] i.e., This destruction shall come suddenly and unexpectedly upon them, while they are saying peace and safety, while they are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and gratifying their lusts — as a buxl that is securely feedinty on the sweet bait, suspecting no harm nigh, and is suddenly cauoht in the snare. (Luke xxi. 34, 35; see also Matt. xxiv. 36-39, and 1 Thess. v. 6, and Eccles. ix. 12.)

151. Ps. xxiii. 6 — “I will dwell,” &c.] Being there not merely as a servant, or as a guest kindly entertained for a little while, but as a child adopted into the family. For, as Christ says, “The Son abideth in the house for ever.”

152. Ps. xxxix. 12.] David asks mercy as a stranger, having reference to the Law often repeated in the Pentateuch, of shewing mercy to strangers, (” a sojourner with Thee,”) alluding to that which is said in Lev. xxv. 23.

153. Ps. lix. 13 — “Consume them,” &c.] The title of the Psalm shews that the occasion of David’s penning this Psalm was Saul’s persecuting of him. Here seems, therefore, to be an imprecation of God’s wrath on Saul to consume and cut him off from the earth; and yet, when Saul was cut off from the earth, how did he rend his clothes, and mourn and weep and fast for Saul as well as Jonathan, [2 Sam. i. 11, 12,] and how did David revenge his death on the Amalekite that slew him, and how did he lament Saul’s death as the death of one that he greatly loved and [who] was very dear to him, in his eleo’y; which is a great evidence that David’s imprecations of God’s vengeance on his enemies, in the Book of Psalms, are not the expressions or breathings of his own spirit, but prophecies uttered; prophetical curses denounced by the Spirit of God. (See note on David’s Elegy, 2 Sam. i. 17.)

154. Ps. lxxii. 15.] It might have been rendered — “Prayer also shall be made through Him continually, and daily shall He be blessed.” The word rendered ‘praised’ is that which is commonly rendered ’ blessed,’ when speaking of an act of worship towards God; and the word translated ’ for ’ is sometimes used for ’ through,’ as

Joshua ii. 15 — “‘Tlirou.i;h ’ the window.” If we hold the transhition ’ for Him,’ then it must be understood of the saints praying for the Father’s accomplishment of His promises made to the Son in the covenant of redemption, that His kingdom may come, His name be glorified, and that He may see His seed, and that the full reward may be given Him for His sufferings, and so that He may receive the joy that was set before Him.

loo. Ps. lxxiv. 25 — “Flood.”] God, in dividing Jordan, did not only divide the water that ordinarily belonged to the river, or the water which came from its fountains, but also the extraordinary additional waters by the great rains a little before harvest. So God cleaved both the fountain — i.e., the fountain water — and the flood.

15G. Ps. lxxxiv. 9 — “Behold, 0 God, our shield.^’] [For this use of the] word ’ behold,’ see 2 Chron. vi. 42, and Ps. cxxxii. 10.

157. Ps. lxxxix. 15.] There is the dreadful and there is the joyful sound. The dreadful soimd was at Mount Sinai. The joyful sound is from Mount Sion. When the people heard the former they were far from beholding the glory of God’s face. Moses only was admitted to see His ’ back-parts;’ the people were kept at a distance, and the light of God’s glory that they saw was so terrible to them, that they could not abide it. But they that know the “joyful sound,” they shall be admitted near, nearer than Moses, so as to see the glory of God’s face or brightness of His countenance, and that not only transiently, as Moses saw God’s back-parts, but continually. The light of God’s glory shall not be terrible to them, but easy and sweet, so that they may dwell in it and walk in it; and it shall be to them instead of the light of the sun; for the sun shall no more be their light by day, nor the moon by night, but God shall be their everlasting light. Compare this with Isa. ii. 5, and Rev. xxi. 23, 24, and xxii. 4, 5.

158. Ps. cxvi. 10, 11 —” Spoken; was greatly afflicted; I said in

my haste, All men are liars.”] The meaning seems to be this I

spake as I have declared, (ver. 4,) because I trusted in God. I was greatly afflicted, I was in extreme distress, (as I declared before;) I was in great astonishment and trembling, (as the word rendered ‘haste’ signifies trembling as well as haste, as it is rendered in Deut. xx. 3;) and in these circumstances I did not trust in man; I said, all men are liars — i.e., not fit to be trusted in; those that will fail and deceive the hopes of them who trust in them, agreeably to Psalm lxii. 8, 0. See Pool, Synop. on ver. 11.

159. Ps. cxxxvi.] This Psalm confirms me that an ultimate end of the creation of the world, and of all God’s works, is His goodness, or the commimication of His good to His creatures. For this Psalm sufficiently teaches that all God’s works, from the beginning of the world to the end of it, are works of mercy to His people, yea, even the works of His vindic[a]tive justice and wrath, as appears by verses 10, 15, 17-22.

160. Ps. cxliv. 5 — “Bow thy heavens, 0 Lord, and come down.”] This was never so remarkably fulfilled as in the incarnation of Jesus

Christ, when hecaven and earth were as it were brought together. Heaven itself was as it were made to bow that it might be united to the earth. God did as it were come down and bring heaven with Him. He not only came down to the earth, but He brought heaven down with Him to men and for men. It was a more strange and wonderful thing. But this will be more remarkably fulfilled still by Christ’s second coming, when He will indeed bring all heaven dowji with Him — viz., all the inhabitants of heaven. Heaven shall be left empty of its inhabitants to come down to the earth; and then the mountains shall smoke, and shall indeed flow down at His presence, as in Isa. lxiv. 1.

PROVERBS.

161. Prov. xi. 18 — “The wicked worketh a deceitful work “] — i.e., a work that will deceive him, or that he is greatly deceived in the consequences of. The work that he does, as he views it, seems to promise fair for happiness: his work looks to him as that which yields him a great benefit; but his work deceives him, and he will find himself miserably deceived in it. Prom the seed that he sows he promises himself a croj? of pleasant fruit; but it will deceive him, for the fruit that it will yield will be gall and wormwood, and will prove the most deadly poison. That this is the sense is evident by the words that follow in the latter part of the verse.

1G2. Prov. xvi. 4.] The wise man, in the expression, “hath made all things,” has not respect merely to the works of creation, but also to the works of Providence: making and creating is commonly understood in this large sense in Scripture for bringing to pass; yea, bringing to pass, though not by an immediate eftecting, but only by permitting, ordering, and disposing, is called ’ making ’ in Scripture. The making the wicked, here mentioned, is a work of Providence. God makes men wicked in the same sense as He is said, in Rom. ix., “to make them vessels of wrath,” to “harden them,” and “fit them to destruction “— viz., by so disposing and ordering things in His providence, that they, in consequence of His disposals, especially in His permission, ,or withholding restraints, do continue in wickedness or are hardened in it. They are distinguished from others in being impenitently and obstinately wicked, and are suff”ered to multiply wickedness and heap up wrath; and God’s end in it is to glorify Himself in the day of theii’ evil or ruin. God makes wicked men in no other sense than He creates darkness, which is not by any positive efficiency, but only ordering, withholding light; for darkness is only a neo-ative. (Isa. xlv. 7.) These things that are here said to be formed, made and created, are all works of Providence; and some of them brought to pass by no positive efficiency, because negative only.

Works of Providence are said to be created, (Num. xvi. 30; Isa. lvii. 19, and xli. 20, and xlv. 8, and xlviii. 7, and liv. 16; Jer. xxxi. 22,) so that it does not appear that this Scripture will justify such an expression as that God made some men to danni them. It is most probable that the wise man, by “making the wicked,” has respect to something that (iod doth respecting the wicked or reprobates, that is distinguishing and peculiar to them, God’s distinguishing dealing towards mankind might be expressed thus — that God niaketh both the righteous and the wicked in the same sense — i.e., whom He will He has mercy on and makes righteous, and whom He will lie hardens and leaves to wickedness. But if the wise man had respect only to the bringing men into being, having guilt and corruption, this is common to all. All, in this sense, are made wicked alike. It is probable that by making the wicked, here is intended the same as is expressed in Kom. xi. 7-10; 2 Thess. ii. 11, 12; Ps. lxxxi. 12; Isa. vi. 9, 10, which is a judicial proceeding and a punishment of sin, though it be a mere sovereign proceeding in God that He distinguishes some by not executing this punishment upon them.

163. Prov. XXV. 25.] Good news from our friends at a distance, who have been gone long from us. Heaven is a far country — a far country especially to sinners, who have gone far off from God to the very borders, and seems to be a far country indeed to an awakened convinced sinner. The gospel is “glad tidings’’ from thence. Abraham’s servant brought to Kebekah good news from a far country. Joseph’s brethren, when they returned to Canaan, to their kindred there, after Joseph had made himself known to them in Egypt, and Joseph sent by them an account of his being alive, and his riches and glory, and plentiful supplies for them, and invited them to come down to him and partake of his wealth and glory, they brought good news from a far country to them who before were sorrowful, and ready to perish with famine. Moses brought to the children of Israel in Egypt, who were in great affliction there, and almost worn out with cruel bondage, good news from Mount Sinai, near the land of Midi an. The spies, when they brought an account of the exceeding fertility of the laud of Canaan, brought good news from a far country to them that were faithful in Israel. Cyrus sent good news from the Persian court to the poor captive Jews in Chaldea, as we have an account in Ezra i. Darius’s messengers brought good news from the same court to the Jews in Judea, (Ezra iv.) Ezra came with good news to Jerusalem, when he brought from thence Artaxerxcs’s commission and decree, (Ezra vii.) Nehemiah came to Jerusalem with good news from the same court, (Neh. i.) Esther’s messengers brought good news from Shushan to the Jews in Judea and in all the distant provinces of Esther, and Mordecai’s advancement, and of great salvation for the Jews. Naomi, when in the land of Moab, heard good news from Canaan, when she heard how the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread, (Paith i. 6.) AU these are types of the good news sent us from heaven in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which gospel was good news from a far country; also, in another sense — viz., it is preached to the Gentries who were far off — aliens and strangers — far off from the Church of God and sent from Jerusalem and the land of Canaan to the remote parts of the world.

1G4. Prov. xxvii. 7.] This is to shew that there is not so much difference between the rich and the poor, as to comfort in outward enjoyments, as the world is ready to imagine. (Eccles. v. 12.)

165. Prov. XXX. 19, 20.] The way of a man with a maid, and the way of an adulterous woman, are here distinct instances. In the criminal intercourse of a man with a maid, the maid was liable to a discovery by some effects that were left in her body, at least it is so generally. But the man might conceal his wickedness — it might be hid as much as the way of a serpent on a rock; and when a married woman is guilty of adultery, then the woman may conceal her wickedness, as well as the adulterer his. vSee Pool, Synop.

ECCLESIASTES.

166. Eccles. iii. 11.] Instead of heart, it should have been translated middle. God hath set the world in the middle of things. God has not set us at the beginning, nor at the end of things. We see but the middle of God’s works, not the beginning of them; we should have seen how wisely and beautifully they were contrived in the Divine counsels — how He made everything beautiful in its time. We see not the end and final issue of things. Then we should see the excellent and glorious issue; that all was order, most fitly and beautifully. The same word is used for middle or midst: Jonah ii. 3 — “Midst of the sea.” So agam the same word for the midst of the sea in Exod. xv. 8, and the same word is used in 2 Sam. xviii. 14 — “In the midst of the oak.”

167. Eccles. vi. 10 — “That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is man.”] There is a certain sphere in which God hath placed man, certain limits by which his attainments in the world and the degree of his worldly happiness are circumscribed, which limits men have come to in time past, and it is a vain imaginaticn for any to expect to exceed those limits. Whatever men attain to, still they are but men. He that made him gave him his name, ‘Adam,’ which implies that he is dust; and let him be never so greedy, aspiring, busy, and restless and grasping in his pursuits, and vast in his expectations, he never will be any more. Man in his first transgression was ambitious of getting above his limits, of being as a god; and this disposition is common among men: but He that is mightier than man hath set his limits, and it is in vain to contend with Him, as it follows — [” Neither may he contend with Him that is mightier than he.”] God will make it to be known that men are but men, (Ps. ix. 20.)

168. Eccles. viii. 1 —” Who is a wise man? and who knoweth the

OLD TESTAMENT — ISAIAH. I’ll

interpretation of a tiling?’’] The word translated ‘thing’ is dahher, which previously signifies ’ word, The meaning seems to be — Who is a wise man? A man who has a right understanding of the Word of Cxod.

169. Eccles. viii. 2-5.] There is a remarkable agreement between what is said in tliesc verses and that which is said by the Apostle in Rom. xiii. 1-5. Here ver. 2 agrees with Rom. xiii. 5; verses 3 and 4 agree with Rom. xiii. 2 and latter part of ver. 4; and here the former part of ver. 5 agrees with Rom. xiii. and the former part of ver. 4.

170. Eccles. X. 5.] i.e., To Jerusalem, eminently called the City: the city to which all Israel was to go three times a year to worship God, and wait on Him for His blessings in the Temple. The meaning of the Spirit of God probably is this — that although there be innumerable kinds of sinners that are intending to go to heaven, and endeavouring to find out ways of their own thither, consistent with their wickecbiess and the folly that reigns in them, and innumerable such ways are invented, yet they all labour in vain. “Strait is the gate,” &c. “Many there be that seek,” &c.

SONG OF SOLOMON.

171. Sol. Song V. 2 — “I sleep, but my heart waketh.”] It may be well explained by these words of Christ to His disciples: Matt. xxvi. 41 — “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

ISAIAH.

172. Isa. iii. 10, 11.] What is contained in these two verses seems to be an introduction to what follows. Through the former part of this book, Isaiah proceeds in his preaching, to the end of chap, xxxv., agreeably to the direction given him of God in this verse, — interchangeably threatening terrible judgments to the wicked that were in Israel, and revealing glorious promises to the righteous among them; as from hence to the end of this chapter the prophet says to the wicked it shall be ill with him; in the next chapter he says tO the righteous it shall be well with him. In the first twelve verses of the Vl”^ chapter he again says to the wicked it shall be ill with him; and chap. vi. 13, and vii. 1-1 G, he says to the righteous it shall be well with him; but ver. 8 is a threatening to the wicked, ver. 17 to end to the wicked; chap. viii. 1-8, to the wicked; verses 9, 10, the righteous; ver. 14, part to the righteous and part to the wicked; ver. 15, to the wicked; verses 16, 17, to the righteous; from thence to end, to the wicked; chap. ix. 1-7, to the righteous; ver. 8 to end, and chap. x. 1-6, to the wicked; ver. 6 to end, and chaps, xi., xii., xiii., and xiv., to the righteous; chap. xxii. 1-19, to the wicked; ver. 20 to end, to the righteous; chap. xxiv. 1-12, to the wicked; ver. 13 to end, and chap. xxv. and xxvi. 1-9, to the righteous; verses 10, 11, to the wicked; ver. 12 to end, and chap, xxvii., to the righteous; chap, xxvii i. 1-4, to the wicked; verses 5, 6, to the righteous; verses 7, 8, to the wicked; verses 9, 10, to the righteous; verses 11-15, to the wicked; ver. 16, to the righteous; verses 17-22, to the wicked; ver. 23 to end, to righteous; chap. xxix. 1-4, to the wicked; verses 5-8, to the righteous; verses 9-16, to the wicked; ver. 17 to end, to the righteous; chap. xxx. 1-7, to the wicked; ver. 18 to the end, to the righteous; chap. xxxi. 1-3, to the wicked; ver. 4 to end, and chap, xxxii. 1-8, to the righteous; verses 9-14, to the wicked; ver. 15 to end, and chap, xxxiii. 1-6, to the righteous; verses 7-14, to the wicked; verses 15-17, to the righteous; verses 17, 18, to the wicked; ver. 19 to end, and chap, xxxiv. and xxxv. to the righteous.

173. Isa. ix. 6 — “Counsellor.”] Not only because He is man’s Counsellor, but God’s. See Gen. i. 26.

174. Isa. ix. 6. — “Wonderful.”] Which shews that this child that was to be born is the same person with the Angel that spake to Manoah, that ascended in the flame of the altar; for He tells Manoah that His name is ‘Secret,’ (Judges xiii. 18.) The word is the same in the original that here is translated ‘Wonderful,’ and that person was God, for He is there spoken of as being God, (verses 22, 23;) so that here is a prophecy of God’s being born, which agrees with the names that follow — ‘The mighty God,’ ‘The everlasting Father,’ and to the name that He is called by in the last preceding chapter but one, in the 14th verse — viz., ‘Ennnanuel.’ And it also confirms that the child here intended is the person that was to be a sacrifice for sin, because this person, whose name was Secret and Wonderful, ascended before Manoah in the flame of the altar; and so it aro-ues it to be the same person that wrestled with Jacob, for when Jacob enquired after His name He answers, “Wherefore enquirest thou after my name?” in like manner as He answered Manoah when he enquired after His name. It argues it also to be that Son of God spoken of in Prov. xxx. 4; see also Rev. xix. 12.

175. Isa. xvi. 2.] The comparison is to be understood of such birds as the children of Israel used to keep, as doves particularly, which, if they were turned and shut out of their dove-houses, would not know what to do nor where to go, no more than Noah’s dove when sent out of the Ark. As to wild birds, the difficulty was not such with them which had no particular house or certain fixed home, and if they were turned out of one nest could make another. See Hosea vii. 11, and xi. 11.

176. Isa. xxx. 8-10.] Such passages as these are a notable evidence that these books of the prophet were not forged by the Jews, and were not received with such respect and made so much of by them, but because they were of Divine authority.

177. Isa. xxxiii. 21.] Jerusalem had no conskleraUc river running by it, as the royal cities in Eoypt and Assyria and Chaldea and most great cities had; nothing but the brook Kedron, upon which account their enemies despised them: nor did the children of Israel deal much in ships, as Egypt and Assyria and Chaldea did, and carried on their wars in consiilerablc measure by them. (See chap, xliii. 14.) But in God there shall be more than an equivalent; the glorious Jehovah will be to Jerusalem a “place of broad rivers and streams.” Thus we read of a river running through the New Jerusalem. But if there be “broad rivers” and “streams” in Jerusalem may not these yield an ea.sy access to the fleet of the invader? No! These are rivers and streams in which shall go no galley with oars or gallant ship. If God Himself be the river, it must needs be Luaccessible to the enemy. God’s people need not fear though the earth be removed, for there is a river that makes glad the city of God. (Ps. xlvi.) [See Henry.]

178. Isa. xxxiv. 5.] Reference to the terrible destruction of the angels in heaven.

179. Isa. xxxiv. 10.] The book of the Lord here meant is this Book, or the book of this prophecy wherein the things in the two foregoing verses are mentioned, as appears by comparing these words with the foregoing and following. When it is said here, “Seek ye out of the book of the Lord,” &c., the meaning is, hereafter, when the event shall prove whether this prophecy be true or no, then read this book and examine this prophecy and compare it with the event and see if anything fails. See if any one of these “doleful creatures” fails of posessing Idumea and Bozrah, and every one with their mate — i.e., see if the prophecy be not most exactly fulfilled. — Corol. Hence the Books of the Prophets should be regarded by the Church of God as part of the Canon of Sacred Scriptures as well as the Books of Moses. They are the “books of the Lord,” or Biblia.

180. Isa. xxxvii. 38.] God pours contempt not only on this great king, but on his god. He had cast great contempt on the God of Israel, and made as though He were unable to defend Jerusalem from his power, as chap, xxxvi. 18-20, and in verses 10-18 of this chapter. This God of Israel that he so despised, as though much inferior to his god, now shews how unable his god is to defend him, by ordering it so that he should be slain in the very temple of his god in whom he trusted, in his sanctuary and in the secret of his jjresence, and that while he was there worshipping of him and imploring his help under his present low and distressed circumstances, and slain, too, by his own sons.

181. Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19 — “For the grave cannot jiraise Thee,” &c.] The death that is here spoken of is that which is death indeed, or is properly so called. The state of death is here spoken of as it is originally, and as being still a state of death, and not as it is changed by redemption from a state of death to a state of life, or so as to be made a more glorious rest of life. Hezekiah speaks of that death wherein men do really die or are truly dead, and not that improperly so called, wherein men are a thousand times more alive than they were before, and are immortal and beyond a possibility of dying. Death as it is originally, and when it is joroperly death, is a state wherein men cannot “praise God” nor “celebrate Him,” nor “hope for His truth.” It is a state of evil without any good: it is, Job says, “A land of darkness as darkness itself, and the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness.” It is a state wherein there is no good done, no good enjoyed, no good hoped for. It is a state of absolute emptiness of any good or principle, happiness or hope. They that are in hell are in such a state of death. Such was death originally. Such was death as it was threatened to our first parents; and very commonly when death is spoken of in the Old Testament it is in this notion of it. For the change of a state of death into a state of more glorious life was not fully revealed under the Old Testament. “Life and immortality are brought to light in the gospel.” It is under this notion that death seems to be spoken of in Eccles. ix. 4-6, where it is said that “a living dog is better than a dead Hon,” and that “the dead have no more a reward,” and that “they have no more a portion for ever in any thing done under the sun.^’ Hezekiah did not mean that they that are redeemed from the power of the grave, they that get the victory over death and shall never die, (as Christ promises to believers,) “shall not jDraise God, nor hope for His truth.” We see in this instance that the better men are the more terrible would it make death if there were no future state. For the better they are the more they love God. Good men have found the fountain of good. Those men who have a high degree of love to God do greatly delight in God. They have experience of a much better happiness in life than others, and therefore it must be more bitter to them to have their being eternally extinct by death. Thus this seemed to be above all other things the sting of Hezekiah ’s affliction in his expectation of death, that he should no more have any oyportunity of communion with God, and of worshipping and praising Him, as appears by these two verses, together with the 11th and 22d verses, there not being at that time a clear and full revelation of a future state. Hence we may strongly argue a future state, for it is not to be supposed that God would make man such a creature as to be capable of looking forward beyond death, and capable of knowing and loving and delighting in Him, as the fountain of all good, and should make it his duty so to do, which will necessarily increase in him a dread of annihilation, and an eager desire of immortality, and yet so order it that that desire should be disappointed, so that his loving his Creator should in some sense make him the more miserable.

182. Isa. xli. 8 — “Chosen.”] This epithet especially belongs to Jacob rather than to Isaac or Abraham, because God ’ chose ’ him before Esau his brother, though they were children of the same parents and twins in the womb together, and though Jacob was the youngest; and chose them before they were born, or either of them liiul done good or evil.

183. Isa. xlii. 10-12.] The songs of the Lord of old were very much confined to the Temple at Jerusalem. When the Jews were in a “strange land” they hung their harps on the willows, and could not sing the Lord’s song. (Ps. cxxxvii. 2-4.) Now the songs of holy joy and praise shall be sung all the world over. The Gentile nations shall share e(pially with the Jews in their testament blessings, and therefore shall join in the New Testament praises and acts of worship. The conversion of the Gentiles is often foretold under this notion of their singing praises with God’s people, as appears by Rom. xv. 9-11. See Isa. xxiv. 16.

184. Isa. xliii. 21-28.] In this prophecy of the great gospel salvation, the freeness of God’s grace in it, as not being at all for our righteousness, is largely insisted on here in the 21st verse, and also in the 4th and 7th and 25th verses, and beginning of chap. xliv. The sovereign good pleasure of God and His electing love is represented as the grand original of all those blessings, and in the 22d and following verses is particularly shewn how it is not and cannot be for any sacrifice offered by those that are the subjects of these blessings, or any righteousness, or anything given, offered or done by them, or anything whatsoever of their own, (ver. 26,) and it is particularly shewn that they have nothing of their own but sins either in themselves or in their ancestors. When the children of Israel were redeemed out of Egypt, and had corn given them, which was a great type of the gospel redemption, and care was taken to instruct the peojjle that it was not for their righteousness. So here when the redemption of the children of Israel out of Babylon is spoken of, (ver. 14,) another great type of go.spel redemption, and that redemption is prophesied of under that type; great care is also taken to inform the Church that it is not for their righteousness. Thus the doctrine of justification by free grace without the works of the Law, or our own righteousness, is the doctrine both of the Old and New Testament, and this confirms it that when the Apostle so much insists on justification without the works of the Law, he means without any moral goodness of ours whatsoever. Justification is the thing here especially spoken of, as appears by verses 25, 26. See chap, xhdii. 9-11, with the context.

185. Isa. xlvi. 1-7.] Bel and Nebo, the gods of Babylon, were first carried by men on their shoulders, (ver. 7,) and then afterwards when Babylon was destroyed they were carried by the beasts. When the Medes and Persians destroyed Babylon they took the cattle of Babylon, and made them carry the gods of Babylon away into captivity, and they were a great burden to the poor cattle, for the images were niade of gold and silver, (ver. 6,) and they were very great and heavy, and these gods of Babylon were not able to deliver either the men or so much as the beasts of the city. They were called the protectors of both. [But yet they] must go into captivity; yea, they themselves must go into captivity. They not only could not preserve the cattle from being led away captive, but they could not deliver them from that grievous circumstance of their captivity, of carrying them who were so heavy a burden to them. It was quite otherwise with the God of Israel. He did not need, to be supported and borne by His jjeople, much less by their beasts. But, on the contrary, His people were supported by Him. He carried them from the womb, and even to hoar hairs. (Verses 3, 4.)

186. Isa. xlix. 23 — “And kings,” &c.] — i.e., to nurse thy children, thy sons and daughters, (spoken of in the foregoing verse,) that the Gentiles shall bring in their arms, and upon their shoulders. It is not meant that kings shall stand in the relation of nursing-fathers, and queens be nursing-mothers to thee. For that hardly will agree to what follows — “They shall bow down,” &c., which does not so well suit with the relation of fathers and mothers as of servants. It is meant they shall be thy nourishers and nurses, not to thee, but /or thee, to thy children. Tutors and nurses are a sort of servants in great houses; and that a sort of servants or ministers are meant here is confirmed from chap. Ix. 10, 16.

187. Isa. lii. lo — “The kings shall shut,” &c.] — i.e., they shall be silent, attending to His wonderful doctrine and instructions as it follows, “for that which had not been told them,” &c. They shall shut their mouths as learners, in acknowledgment of His superior wisdom, and as a testimony of their desirousness to hear and learn, as Job says, chap. xxix. 21, 22. They shall be silent also in token of their admiration [= wonder.]

1 88. Isa. liii. 1 1 — “By His knowledge.”] The word for ‘knowledge ’ here is very often used for ‘righteousness,” holiness,’ and ‘piety.’ See Job xxi. 22, and xxxiii. 8, and xxxvi. 12; Ps. cxix, 66; Prov. i. 4, 7, 22, 29, and ii. 5, 6, 10, and v. 2, and viii. 9, 10, and ix. 10, and x. 14, and xi. 9, and xii. 1, and xiii. 15, 16, and xiv. 7, 18, and xv. 7, 14, and xviii. 15, and xix. 25, 27, and xx. 15, and xxi. 11, and xxii. 12, and xxiii. 12, and xxiv. 5, and xxx. 8; Eccles. ii. 21, and vii. 12; Isa. V. 13, and xi. 2, and xxviii. 9, and xxxiii. 6; Jer. iii. 15, and xxii. 16; Hosea iv. 1, 6, and vi. 6. Besides, many places where the verb this noun comes from, is used in an agreeable sense, concerning which I have not examined the Concordance; and other words of like signification. But Isa. xlii. 19-21, is particularly worthy of observation.

189. Isa. Ii. 4 — “Hearken,” &c.] Here seems to be a prophecy of a new revelation to be made of God’s mind and will, and a new dispensation or establishment of religion, for any constitution or establishment by Divine revelation is called a Law in the Old Testament. So that gracious Covenant, and these free promises established to Abraham, is called a Law. (Ps. cv. 8, &c.) So the whole of the revelation of God’s will is called a Law throughout the 119th Psalm. Counsel and advice is sometimes called a Law: Prov. i. 8 — “Porget not the Law of thy mother,” and vi. 20, and chap. xiii. 14 — “The Law of the wise is a fountain of life.” As the first Law went out of Mount Sinai, so the second went out of Mount Sion; Isa. ii. 8, and Micah iv. 2, speaking of gospel times — “For out of Zion,” &c. It might as well have been transhited “a Law shall go forth out of Zion,” as here it is said, a Law shall proceed from Me; for the word in both places is without any diversity; and when it is said, the Law shall proceed or go forth out of Zion, it is meant that a Law shall be given at Mount Zion in the same manner as it is said in Deut. xxxiii. 2. As there it is said, “The Law shined forth from Mount Paran, and that from His right hand went a fire of Law for them,” (for so it is in the original) — i.e., to enlighten them. (See note in the place) So here it is said, “A Law shall proceed from Me, and I will make My judgment to rest for a light of the people.” We find that Mount Sinai and Mount Sion are opposed one to another by the Apostle in this respect, that as the Law went forth out of the one, so the glorious gospel went forth from the other. (Ileb. xii. 18-22 and 25-27.) This new Law went forth out of Mount Sion or Jerusalem in two respects — (1.) As it went forth from the sj)iritual Mount Sion, from heaven and the Church of God, (Heb. xii. 25;) and also as it first went forth from Jerusalem when the Spirit was poured out on the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, which was the same day that the Law was given at Sinai, and a day kept in commemoration of that event. See 1 Chron. xxiii. 26.

190. Isa. liii. 2.] This verse has respect to Christ’s appearance in mean and low circumstances, without outward pomp and splendour. Great outward glory is in Scriptm’e often compared to a tree growinghigh and large, and flourishing in its pride, (Ps. xxxvii. 85; Dan. iv. 10, &c.; Isa. X. 33, 34; Ezek. xxxL 3, 4, &c.; Isa. ii. 13 with context, and Job xxix. 1 9, 20;) and therefore Christ’s being destitute of earthly glory, is [represented] by His being “a root out of a dry ground,” not like a tree planted on a fat soil or by streams of water, that flourishes and grows large, and makes a great show. Christ is in Scripture often compared to a root, plant, or branch. The Jews expected such a branch as this; but, on the contrary. He is a root out of a dry ground, that grows low and spreads but little and makes no gay appearance. It was a low bush, and not a mighty tree, that was seen burning on Mount Sinai and was not consumed, which was a type of Jesus Christ. The same thing is signified by His being “without form, or comeliness, or beauty.” Earthly pomp and glory of wealth, power, and magnificence is called ’ comeliness ’ in Scripture, as Ezek. xxvii. 10, and so it is called ‘beauty,’ (2 Sam. i. 19; Isa. xiii. 19, xxviii. 1; Ezek. xxvii. 3, 4, 11, xxviii 12, 17.)

191. Addition to Isa. liii. 2.] Particularly we find the pomp and magnificence of great earthly princes is compared to the stateliness and beauty of a great, tall, spreading, flourishing tree in a fruitful soil, with a multitude of waters at the root, (Ezek. xxxi. 2-10; compare Deut. iv. 12; Isa. x. 33; Ps. xxxvii. 35,) and this stately flourishing appearance of such a tree, called its beauty or comeliness, (verses 3, 7-9;) and therefore here, when the Messiah is spoken of as being not like such a stately flourishing tree, with many waters at the root, but as a low tree or bush, and weak tender plant, and root out of a dry ground, or having no waters at the root, it is natural that Ave should understand that the Messiah should come without this pomp and glory of earthly princes; yea, in a state and with an appearance that should be the reverse of it.

192. Isa. lvi. 3, 4, &c.] Here is plainly a prophecy of the abrogating of some of the Law of Moses. In gospel times [this shall be,] or particularly those in Deut. xxiii. 1-3. See ] Chron. xxiii. 6 Jer. iii. 16, 17.

193. Isa. lxv. 20 — “Child... hundred years”] — i.e., though it dies in childhood, shall die with the attainments of one a hundred years old — a great happiness to be old — the child shall be fully happy. “Accursed,” — i.e., though he live till he be a hundred years old, though he seems to prosper and be let alone, yet the curse shall overtake him. (See Eccles. viii. 12, and vi. 3-6.)

194. Isa. lxvi. 1 — “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.”] The mercy-seat in the Temple is no longer God’s throne; but heaven and the ark and temple are no longer God’s footstool, as they used to be called. (1 Chron. xxviii. 2; Ps. xcix. 5, cxxxii. 7, 8; Lam. ii. 21; Isa. Ix. 1 3.) The glorious times shall come wherein the whole habitable world shall be blessed with as honourable tokens of God’s presence, not only as the Land of Canaan, but as the Temple; yea, as the holy of holies and the ark that had God’s glory upon it. See Jer. iii. 16, 17; Isa. Ix. 2, ii. 5, 6; Rev. xxi. 23, 24; also compare Haggai ii. 7; Isa. vi. 1, 3.

JEREMIAH.

195. Jer. xvii. 16, 18.] What we find in these verses is a confirmation that when the prophet Jeremiah, and other inspired penmen of the Old Testament, imprecated judgments on their enemies, those parts of their writings are not of private interpretation, or that they did therein express their private inclinations and desires; but sj)ake pro23hetically the mind [of God ;] cursed them in the name of the Lord, or foretold that these judgments should come. For here Jeremiah, in ver. 16, solemnly appeals to God that he had not desired the woeful day. But yet, in ver. 18, he prays that the evil day might be brought on his enemies.

196. Jer. xxvi. 9.] That which they persecute the prophet Jeremiah for, is the same thing that they charged as a great crime upon Stephen, and for which they put him to death. (See Acts vi. 13,

197. Jer. XX. 14, &c.] How great an evidence is to be gathered from this, and other like passages of the Old Testament, of a future state of reward to the saints. Jeremiah was a man of affliction in this life. It is evident that as long as he lived he met Avitli opposition, hatred, and continual affl,iction, so that he wrs heartily weary of life and wished he had never been born. This affliction was followed with no remarkable alteration from affliction to prosperity, as it was in Job; but while he lived, he lived to see nothing but those things that were most grievous to his heart, which made his being in this world fiir worse than no being. Now, if there be no future state, how is this consistent with the frequent declarations of God in the Old Testament, that those that fear Him are blessed and happy; and His promises, that it shall be well with them, that He will be their defence and exceeding great reward, &c., which the Old Testament is full of; and with what God said and promised to Jeremiah in particular, (chap. i. 8, 18, 19, xv. 11;) and also with the promises God makes by Jeremiah to the righteous, which he applies to him in this very context, (verses 11-13)?

EZEKIEL.

198. Ezek. vii. 12 — “Let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn.”] Here it may be asked, What occasion would the seller here have to mourn more than the buyer, if there had been no captivity approaching? When men make bargains, both buyer and seller aim at their own advantage. Answer: The prophet here has respect to buyers and sellers of inheritances. Inheritances were not wont to be sold in Israel, unless a man was become poor and was obliged to sell his inheritance, and it was looked upon as a great calamity to a man when he was thus obliged to sell his inheritance; and therefore God, in mercy and tenderness to them, required that the land should not be sold for evei’, but that a redemption should be granted. (Lev. XXV. 23-25.) But at this time, neither had the seller any occasion to mourn nor the buyer to rejoice, for it made no alteration in the circumstances of one or the other, because the whole Land was about to be broken up and left desolate, and they were all to be carried away out of it into captivity.

199. Ezek. ix. 5, 6.] It is a great evidence that infants are guilty of sin,* that wdien these destroying angels were sent on that errand to executt3 God’s fury upon the people, (ver. 8,) and that reason was given for it, that their iniquity required such terrible vengeance, and that it was a just recompense of their sin, (ver. 10,) — I say that when these angels came on such an errand, and also had express direction to spare some, to avoid them with great care and not come nigh them, yet they are directed to smite and slay utterly without pity all the rest, young and old, and even little children. Tho?e that they are with such great care to except and not come near, are excepted expressly because they had approved themselves not partakers in the sins of the city; and therefore who can imagine that at the same time orders

Query: Rather involved in the guilt and penalty of the Fall? — G.

should be given to smite and slay utterly, without their eye sparing or having pity, those that were a great deal more evidently free from having any share in the sin of the city, because they are not capable of sinning, which is the case of little children if they have no original sin? This order would never, surely, have been given with such circumstances, merely for the sin of the parents, if they had no sin that was properly their own, as we may be the rather assured, because God Himself did so fully and largely declare to this prophet that children would not die for the iniquity of the father, nor for any iniquity that they were not properly guilty of, in chap, xviii. of Ezekiel.

200. Ezek. x. 19.] The Shekinah or ‘glory’ of the God of Israel made four removes: first, to the threshold of the house or Temple, (chap. ix. 3;) secondly, to the east gate of the court of the Temple, which is mentioned here; thirdly, from hence to the top of Mount Olivet, (chap. xi. 23;) lastly, from thence into heaven, (ver. 2-i.)

201. Ezek. xiv. 14.] This shews that it is no new notion, lately first thought of in the world, that one may be favoured of God for the sake of another’s righteousness. It was old at Ezekiel’s time, and it is not spoken of here as a’ false or unreasonable notion, as though there were no such thing as one’s being accepted for the sake of another’s righteousness; but only the wickedness of the Land was so great that the righteousness of these eminently holy men would not be sufficient to avail for them, or at most, that the righteousness of men is of so little worthiness that it is not sufficient to recommend any more than themselves. But the righteousness of Christ is sufficient. It is so excellent and worthy in God’s account, that it is sufficient to procure favour for the vilest of sinners. Herein is Christ a more excellent and sufficient Mediator than Noah, Daniel, or Job, or the most holy and eminent of mere men. Noah was in the old world, but saved only himself and his family. Daniel was in Babylon when it was destroyed, and only saved himself. Job saved only himself by his righteousness, when all his children were destroyed. Each lived in a very degenerate time. Noah in the old world. Job when all nations were falling away to idolatry. Daniel in a most degenerate time in Israel.

202. Ezek. xvi. 6.] Doubtless it is something very remarkable and wonderful that God would here signify by this eraphatical repetition; and the emphasis lies partly in these words, “when thou wast in thy blood,” the circumstances that she was in when God shewed mercy on her; and partly in these words, “I said unto thee, Live,” shewing the wonderfulness and excellency of the favour God shewed her in these circumstances. The thing that God would have so much remarked, and to have such special notice taken of, is the absolute freeness and sovereignty of His grace in bestowing life upon her. He said to her,” Live,’ when she was polluted in her blood, while she was in her sin, and so not for her righteousness, or in anywise moved by her moral purity. God is not moved by this either in converting or justifying the sinner, for He both renews and justifies the ungodh’. (Titus iii. 3-7; 1 Cor. vi. 11: Eph. ii. 1-13; Rom, iv. 5.) This also signifies

OLD TESTAMENT — DANIEL. lol

God’s slieTving niercj’ to tlic sinner when he is helpless, for what is more helpless than an infant cast out in its bloocW [“I said unto thee, Live.”] This signities that life in her was wholly the effect of God’s power, and whofiy the fruit of His mere good pleasure, which is further signitied by ver. 8 — “Thy time las the time of love.”

203. Ezck. xvi. 49 — “Poor and needy.”] Hence we learn that the poor, though wicked, are the objects of our charity. For it is not probable tluit the poor and needy in Sodom here spoken of were only godly persons, where there were scarce any who were righteous, and not ten in the whole city, and it may be none but Lot; who was not poor but rich.

204. Ezek. xxiv. 0, 7.] The Law required that they .should not eat iicsh with the blood, but that the blood should be poured on the ground and covered with du.st. (Lev. xvii. 13.) Flesh dressed and eaten with the blood was polluted, abominable flesh. The people of Jerusalem are here compared to such lle-sh in the caldron. Her blood is in the midst of her; she is like a pot where scum is in the midst of it. When bloody flesh is boiled in a pot, the blood rises in a scum. The sin of the people is compared in these words to two things: (1.) To the blood and scum, which is the pollution and abomination of bloody flesh. (2.) To the wickedness of those that shed blood of men, and did not cover it with earth, as they were required to do the blood of beast.s, but were so open and daring in it as to set it on the top of a rock.

205. Ezek. xlvi. 15.] Here is mention made of a morning sacrifice, but no evening sacrifice; because in that glorious time here spoken of there will be a continual and unceasing day but no evening: intimated by that in Isaiah — ‘’ Thy sun shall no more go down,” &c.; and that in Zechariah — “It shall be one day; not day and night: but at evening-time it shall be light;” and typified by the sun’s standins still in Joshua’s time.

DANIEL.

206. Dan. vii. 5 — “Three ribs in the mouth of it,” &c.] These ribs seem to be the bones of his prey. The ribs rather than other bones were represented perhaps, because the ribs are those bones which are next the vitals, and the sight of them did naturally excite the idea of his tearing and devouring the vitals of his prey; not one rib, but three at once are seen in his mouth, the better to represent his extraordinary voraciousness.