was satisfied for a time, that only a certain outwardly defined territory should be kept sacred as his own; since, otherwise, if the two opposing principles were mixed up together, the evil would completely swallow up the good. With the first coming of Christ, the ultimate purpose of God drew nearer to its realisation. The outward distinction between sacred and profane fell into the background; because a much stronger support and aid were communicated to the former by the spirit of Christ. Nevertheless, the two antagonistic elements still continue, and even in the believer the good does not attain to complete and sole supremacy in this present life. The day will come, however, when the Lord will be all in all, and when every distinction between the holy and the unholy, every corrupt admixture of the two, and all differences of degree in the holy itself, will come to an end (see vol. ii. p. 447 sqq.). Just as the first clause announces the change of everything profane into a holy thing; so does the second clause announce the abolition of the different degrees of holiness. Under the Old Testament the bowls before the altar,—that is, the basons into which the blood of the animals slain in sacrifice was received, and from which it was sprinkled upon the altar and poured out at the foot of the altar,-were reckoned among the holiest of the vessels; for of all the vessels in use, these were the most directly appropriated to the holiest service of God. On the other hand the pots, namely, those in which the meat of the sacrifices was boiled, were reckoned among the lowest in point of holiness. We can have no doubt that it is to them that the prophet alludes (see ver. 21), and they were subservient to human purposes. Even in this instance the Jewish commentators were compelled by their notion of the perpetual duration of the ceremonial law, (for a refutation of which either this passage or Mal. i. 11 is amply sufficient), to resort to a forced interpretation, in order to get rid of the correct, but unpalatable meaning. The same thought, the cessation of all difference in the degrees of holiness, is expressed by Ezekiel in chap. xliii. 12, though he employs a different figure. The whole mountain, he says, upon which the new temple stands, is to be most holy.

Ver. 21. "And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to Jehovah of Saboath; and all they that sacrifice come and

take of them and boil therein; and in that day there will be no Canaanite more in the house of the Lord of Sabaoth."

Just as the pots in the temple will be quite as holy as the sacrificial bowls, so will all the pots in Jerusalem and Judah, which have hitherto been simply clean, not holy, be just as holy as the pots in the temple. In the closing words, which express the same idea as the preceding verse, that in the new economy the profane will become holy, many understand to mean dealer. But by far the majority follow the Septuagint and render it Canaanite; and in the main this rendering is greatly to be preferred. When the prophet says, that at that time there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord, it necessarily follows, that in his day there were Canaanites in the house of the Lord. But this shows that we are not to understand the word as literally denoting a Canaanite by birth, for even the Gibeonites, to whom many commentators, including Hofmann, suppose that the words refer, were not to be found in the temple itself, from which all foreigners were most scrupulously excluded. Moreover, it can hardly be imagined that the Gibeonites, who had been received for centuries without any exception into the nation of God, should be simply represented as Canaanites; and it is still more inconceivable that they should be regarded as unclean. On the contrary, we have an example here of an idiom, which is by no means infrequently met with, in which the ungodly members of the congregation itself are either described as heathen or uncircumcised, or else directly called Canaanites or by the name of some other heathen nation, for the purpose of ridiculing their arrogant pretensions in consequence of their outward connexion with the congregation. Circumcision had the force of a covenant-seal, only when accompanied by the spiritual condition, of which it was a visible sign; where this was not the case circumcision was reckoned uncircumcision. Just as the Pentateuch speaks of a circumcision of the heart, which was rendered obligatory by the outward circumcision of the Israelites (Deut.

ולא יהי עביד תגבא עוד בבית ,Jonathan, for example, says 1

מקדשא

"and there will no longer be any one carrying on a trade in the house of the sanctuary; and Aquila (who is said by Jerome to adopt the rendering mercator, propos), Abenezra, Kimchi, Abarbanel, and Grotius, express a similar view.

x. 16, xxx. 6); so does Jeremiah speak of the ungodly Israelites as uncircumcised in heart. Thus in chap. iv. 4, he says, "circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem," and in chap. ix. 26, "for all the heathen are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart." Ezekiel goes a step further. In chap. xliv. 9, he represents the ungodly priests and Levites, not merely as uncircumcised in heart, but also as uncircumcised in flesh and sons of the stranger. That the uncircumcised and the sons of the stranger mentioned here are not actual heathen, as many commentators have strangely enough supposed, but ungodly Levites, is evident, among other reasons, first, from the fact that priestly actions are attributed to the persons alluded to, particularly the offering of sacrifices (compare ver. 7 with ver. 15); secondly, from in ver. 10, which these commentators (e.g. Rosenmüller) erroneously render“ also,” "however" (aber), instead of but (sondern); and lastly, from ver. 15 and 16, where the announcement of the reward, to be conferred upon the pious, is opposed to the threat of punishment to be inflicted upon the ungodly priests and Levites. Of the transfer of the name of some one idolatrous nation, which had distinguished itself by the depth of its moral degradation, to the ungodly Israelites, the following examplés may be adduced. Isaiah, in chap. i. 10, addresses the princes of Israel without reserve as "princes of Sodom," and the people as the "people of Gomorrha." In Ezek. xvi. 3, we find these words, "thus saith the Lord to Jerusalem; thine origin and thy descent is from the land of the Canaanite, thy father is the Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite." The meaning of the passage before us, therefore, cannot be doubtful. It is a parallel to such passages as Is: iv. 3, "he that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy;" and chap. lx. 21, "thy people also shall be all righteous," (compare the history of Susannah, ver. 48).-At the same time it cannot be denied that the rendering dealer is to a certain extent correct. The fact that Canaanite also means dealer shows that the profanity of the disposition, which characterised this nation, was especially apparent in the predominance of material interests. In Zeph. i. 11, where the overthrow of the covenant-nation is announced in

the words "all the people of Canaan are destroyed," the Chaldee has very correctly pharaphrased the passage thus, "totus populus cujus opera similia sunt operibus Cananaeorum," and it would be wrong to render it, "the merchant people," as v. Cölln and Maurer have done. At the same time it is evident from the parallel clause, "all they that are laden with silver are cut of" (Jonathan, "divites opibus"), that the reference is not merely to the Canaanites generally, but particularly to their unholy love of gain. In Hosea xii. 7 the fallen covenant nation is spoken of in these terms, "Canaan, in his hand is the balance of deceit, he loves to act unjustly." "The Phoenicians," observes C. B. Michaelis (in loc.), "as Grotius and others observe, were piλoxрÝμATοι Te Kai тρтaι, avaricious and cheats." In Ezek. xvii. 4 it is certainly wrong to render Canaan "merchant." Babylon was a second Canaan (see Hävernick in loc.), but in the next clause "city of merchants" is introduced, as a parallel to the land of Canaan, to show that the Babylonians are not called Canaanites on account of their carnal disposition in general, but on account of their carnal devotedness to trade. That this has been an hereditary failing with the Jewish people, experience teaches even to the present day; and therefore it is very appropriate, that the prophet should conclude his prophecy with an allusion to the extermination of this evil in the days of salvation, seeing that the loss of national independence, which causes personal interests to be thrown into greater prominence, would make the evil stronger than ever. If, then, the Canaanites represent the essential character of the world, from the most material point of view, this places in a new light the purification of the temple in John ii. 13-22. In its general features the latter rests upon Malachi. But in the fact that the Lord drives out the traders from the temple as a symbol of the reformation predicted by the prophet, -that his zeal for a reform manifests itself on the traders in particular, there is an allusion to the passage before us, in combination with that of Malachi. In the purification of the temple this passage is, as it were, placed upon the stage before our eyes; compare especially ver. 14, " and found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money

1 The rendering given in the English version.-TR.

sitting;" and ver. 16, "make not my Father's house an house of merchandise."-There were degrees in the fulfilment of this announcement; see the remarks on Is. iv. 3. By the blood and Spirit of Christ, the material spirit received a heavy blow, and in every age of the Church there is a powerful reaction. The ultimate fulfilment is that described in Rev. xxi. 27 and xxii. 15.