sented as walking preciously, or magnificently (). The whole clause we translate thus, "res pretiosae viles evadent," the heavenly bodies will lose their most splendid ornament, namely, the light. With this explanation we get rid of the difficulty arising from the apparent difference in the gender, for sun, moon, and stars are masculine.

1

Ver. 7. "And there will be a day, it will be known to the Lord, not day and not night, and at evening time it will get light."

We have already found the expression a day used to denote, comparatively speaking, the shortest period of time, in chap. iii. 9; and also a month in chap. xi. 8, used for a comparatively short period. Cocceius has correctly explained the words before us thus, "unus dies, tempus non longum." The allusion is to the transient character of the visitations of God. The words of Ps. xxx. 5 are applicable to the Church, "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Moreover this day is known to the Lord; it is under his supervision and direction. It does not come unexpectedly, or interfere with his plans; but is subservient to his counsels of mercy for the Church. Not day, &c.; i.e. "which is not." Many commentators suppose that a commingling of day and night is intended, a transition state of dim twilight, but there are no parallel passages containing any such idea. We have rather to think of a day, which is not day at all, in consequence of the lights of heaven having lost their brightness. "The usual order is miraculously inverted, the day is turned into night, and the day comes in the evening." (Schmieder). The expression "at evening time it gets light," may be explained from the antithesis in Amos viii. 9, "and it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will bring darkness upon the land in clear day." Just as in this case, it becomes

1 The primary signification of N is to contract; from this come (1) the meaning "to curdle," and (2) the idea of diminution or deterioration. In

קפא

the Arabicis means contracta, corrugata fuit res. In the Talmud means allevare, leve reddere,, leve, vile, vilis pretii. In the gloss (see Buxtorf c. 2084). The verb is of contracting, diminishing.

to the Talmud it is explained by also found in Ex. xv. 8, in the sense

dark at the time when we should expect and actually possess the brightest light; so, in the passage before us, it gets light at the time, when, according to the natural course of things, the dark night is apparently about to commence. It is the exalted privilege of the Church, that with her at evening time it always becomes light.

Ver. 8. "And it cometh to pass on this day, living waters will issue forth from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea, and half of them to the western sea, in summer and in winter shall it be."

The eastern and western seas, that is the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean, are given here as the limits of the course of the living waters. There is a difference between this and Ezek. xlvii., where the sea itself is healed by the waters. By selecting these two points the prophet intimates, that the water will flow through the whole of the promised land, which is bounded on the east by the Dead Sea, and on the west by the Mediterranean. For what purpose, may be gathered from Joel iii. 18: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Acacias." Whatever conclusion may be formed with reference to the more precise meaning of "the valley of Acacias," one thing is certain, that it is a dry and barren locality; the intention of the waters, therefore, viz. to fertilize the land, which is barren for want of water, and to furnish a refreshing draught to the thirsty of every age, an intimation of which has already been given in the foregoing announcement of plenty in the place of dearth, fertility instead of barrenness,—is hereby confirmed. The figurative character of the whole representation is placed beyond all doubt by this one fact, that natural water could not possibly flow in two opposite directions. Water, whether coming from the clouds, or contained in springs, brooks, and rivers, is constantly employed as a figurative representation of the blessings

1 The passage before us points back to this and also to Ezekiel. The allusion to the sea is taken from the latter. A brief reference was sufficient here, on account of Ezekiel having entered so minutely into the symbolical representation.

of God in their whole compass and fulness, by which the dry and thirsty desert of human need is refreshed. To be forsaken of God, and deprived of his mercies and blessings, is represented as drought. Compare, for example, Is. xli. 17, "when the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst; I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them;" Is. xxx. 25, " and there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high hill, streams of water in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall;" Ezek. xxxiv. 26, "and I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing, and I will cause the shower to come down in his season ;"-Is. xliii. 20, xlviii. 21, xlix. 10, lviii. 11. (See also the remarks on Ezek. xlvii. 1 at vol. iii., p. 65, and my commentary on Rev xxii. 1). The water, the type of blessing and salvation, issues forth from Jerusalem. Under the image of the central point of the kingdom of God under the Old Testament, the place which the Lord made glorious by his typical presence in the temple, there is here exhibited to the prophet the Church of the New Testament, from which blessings go forth to the world, and which may be the more appropriately called by the name Jerusalem, since it originated there, and is its legitimate continuation. According to Joel and Ezekiel the water issues from the temple. In Rev. xxii. 1 it is described as "proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." If Jerusalem, then, stands for its antitype; the whole compass of the land of Judea, over which the water from the fountain flows, must denote that which bears the same relation to the spiritual Jerusalem as the latter bore to the typical, namely, the whole of the New Testament kingdom of God, which is destined, according to ver. 9 and the constant declaration of all the rest of the prophets, to overspread the whole earth. The entire earth, therefore, is to be watered by the stream of divine blessings proceeding from the Church (Ps. xxxvi. 9). The concluding words, "in summer and in winter shall it be," indicate the constancy of the divine blessings," as contrasted with the uncertain character of all human possessions. The winter is mentioned as the time, when even the rest of the streams yield water in abundance. In Job vi. 16-18, the patriarch compares his friends to streams, which swell in winter, and have an abundance of water, but are dried up in

summer, when the water is most needed, and in consequence bitterly disappoint the traveller, who has built his hopes upon them. In Isaiah lviii. 11, the prophet represents the mercy of God, and those who are in possession of it, under the figure of a spring of water, whose waters do not lie.

Ver. 9. "And the Lord will be king over all the land; in that day the Lord will be one, and his name one.”

66

This is almost always rendered "over all the earth." There can be no doubt that in substance this rendering is correct, and that reference is made here to the fact that the dominion of the Lord will extend over all the families of the earth, in contradistinction to its previous restriction to one single nation (chap. ix. 9, 10; Ps. lxxii. 8—11; Ps. ii.; Dan. ii. 35, &c.). But, notwithstanding this, we agree with Rückert in preferring the rendering over all the land." In ver. 8 the prophet depicts the new kingdom of God under the image of the former one. In ver. 10 the same mode of representation is adopted; and it is certainly hardly likely that is used here in a different sense from that in which it occurs so immediately afterwards. Marck has justly observed, "it is not the kingdom of nature and ordinary providence, which is spoken of here, but the special kingdom of grace-such as God formerly possessed in Israel." The Lord is naturally the king of the whole human race; but this relation was disturbed by the fall, which formed the commencement of a series of attempts at rebellion, ending in the renunciation of obedience on the part of nearly all his subjects, who chose to themselves other lords and kings in heaven and on earth according to their hearts' desires. Lord, to whom it would have been an easy thing to annihilate all his rebellious subjects by one word of his omnipotence, was prompted by his love to seek, rather, their voluntary return to obedience. And because the whole race was not ripe for this, he commenced by restoring the natural relation between himself and one single people. The execution of his entire plan, to which the special theocracy had merely been subservient, commenced with the first coming of Christ. Its final consummation will coincide with his return in glory, when all his opponents will either have been subdued by grace so as to become his servants instead of his foes, or have been exterminated by his

The

punishments from the midst of his kingdom, which will then embrace the entire earth. The words of Ps. xxii. 27, 28, are peculiarly worthy of notice in connexion with this announcement: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the families of the heathen shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and he ruleth among the heathen." That all the heathen will one day submit to the Lord arises from the fact that he is their rightful and natural king, and that their present attitude towards him is an unnatural one, and therefore cannot last.-The Lord will be only one, and his name only one; the gross system of polytheism will come to an end; and also that more refined polytheism, which looks upon all forms of worship as merely so many different modes, all equally legitimate, in which the one divine Being is worshipped (see the remarks on Hosea ii. 18, vol. i. p. 260).

It is possible that the peculiar circumstances of the time may have induced the prophet to lay stress upon the fact, that in that day the name of the Lord will be but one. The edicts of the Persian kings, which are recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, render it very probable, that the Persians, who were strongly inclined to religious eclecticism, were ready to acknowledge their own god and the God of Israel as one and the same deity, differing only in name and in the mode of manifestation. Nothing further would be gained by this, however, for they naturally meant, that every nation was to abide by its own name and adhere to the mode in which it had received this manifestation, the latter being, in fact, inseparable from the name.

Ver. 10. "All the land will change as the plain, from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem, and she is high and sits in her place, from Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's winepresses."

The subject of this verse is twofold, first, the exaltation of Jerusalem, which is effected by the change of all the rest of the land into a plain, and secondly, the restoration of the city to its former grandeur, after its destruction in consequence of being taken by the enemy (ver. 2), but still more, perhaps, in consequence of the earthquake (ver. 5), and the other judgments inflicted upon the enemy within her walls. We will first of all