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Ver. 5. "Whose buyers slay them, and hold themselves not guilty, and whose sellers say, blessed be the Lord, for I enrich myself, and their own shepherds spare them not.”

The futures in this verse are all to be taken as signs of actions, which had indeed already commenced, but would also be continued. They are sufficient in themselves to show that it is not merely with reference to the present and the past, that the

is לֹא יֶחְשָׁמוּ .Israelites are called sheep for the slaughter

rendered by many commentators "they are not punished;" by others "they do not feel themselves guilty."

In a similar manner the words "blessed be the Lord, I enrich myself," are understood by most expositors as indicating the greatest cruelty and harshness on the part of the sellers. But this view is decidedly incorrect. can neither mean "they regard themselves as guilty," nor "they are not punished." It is true that, like all the verbs denoting sinning, has also a subordinate meaning indicating punishment for sin, but the leading idea of guilt is never lost sight of. The untenable character of this rendering is still more apparent from a comparison of the parallel passages. From these we learn that the idea which the prophet intends to express is this, "the wretched condition of the people is not the result of human caprice, but of the just Jer. ii. 3 is particularly applicable here: Israel was holy to the Lord, the first-fruits of his increase. All that devoured him were guilty, evil came upon them, saith the Lord." The prophet contrasts the former time, when no one could have injured the nation which walked in the fear of God,

judgment of God."

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looks upon this as a distinct prediction of the work and fate of Christ." In our opinion, however, any one who is disposed to regard the prophets as holy men of God, moved by the Holy Ghost, (and this is not a matter of personal predilection, but the opinion of the whole Christian church), will find in this prophecy, even when looked at from a purely scientific point of view, very strong ground for congratulating himself on having the disposition referred to, and for commiserating those who do not share it. The rationalistic expositors in their interpretation of this 11th chapter, as well as of the 53d chapter of Isaiah, have brought to light nothing but exegetical monstrosities, to be free from the necessity of upholding which, is one of the blessings of faith in the word of God.

1 Jonathan: "And as any one, who ate of the first fruits of the harvest before the priests, the sons of Aaron, had offered some of the sheaf upon the altar, was guilty, so did all, who spoiled the house of Israel, contract guilt to themselves by so doing."

without incurring guilt and exposing himself to punishment, with the present time, when it is given up by the Lord himself, as a just prey to its foes, who act as his instruments. Jer. 1. 6, 7, is equally in point, "my people are lost sheep, their shepherds lead them astray; they let them wander about upon the mountains; they go from mountain to hill, they forget their fold. All who find them devour them, and their adversaries say, we incur no guilt, because they have sinned against the Lord, the habitation of righteousness, against the Lord, the hope of their fathers." The reason why their enemies are not guilty is here expressly stated to be, that the nation has fallen away from its God, who has given them up to the tyranny of their enemies, as a just act of divine judgment. Jer. xxv. 9 also deserves to be quoted, although not so distinctly referred to by the prophet, as the two already mentioned: "Behold, I send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and bring them upon this land, and upon all these nations round about, and I place them under the ban, and lay them waste," &c. Nebuchadnezzar is represented here as the minister of divine justice, who might have executed its decrees upon the covenant nation in an irreproachable manner, if this appointment had been the motive by which he was actuated, just as the war against the people of the covenant is described as a holy war in chap. xxii. 7 ("I sanctify destroyers upon thee.")

"Thy sellers say" is equivalent to they might say. A person is often represented as having said what he might very naturally have said under the circumstances. But if we compare Is. xxxvi. 10, where Sennacherib says, Am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? the Lord said unto me, go up against this land, and destroy it," we shall see that the enemies of the Israelites had some conception at times of their high vocation. Gain which can lead a man to say, "bless or praise the Lord," in other words for which he can thank God, is righteous gain.1 is not their possessors, as many suppose, but their

" we are

Calvin has well observed, though in a different connection, accustomed to give thanks to God, when we can regard the benefits, which fall to our lot, as his gift. The thief, who has murdered an innocent man, does not say "blessed be God," for he would prefer that the name of God should be obliterated, since he has wounded his own conscience."

sellers, as the antithesis to clearly shows (compare Is. xxiv. 2). The buyers and sellers of the flock are those who do just as they please with the covenant-nation. We cannot follow Theodoret, Cyril, and many others, who imagine that wicked rulers belonging to the nation itself are intended. The expression must rather be referred to foreign oppressors, as it has been by Jerome, who correctly explains it as denoting the Romans. This is obvious from the parallel passages just quoted, and still more so from the circumstances themselves. How could the flock of Israel be a lawful gain to its native shepherds? They were the principal cause of its rebellion, and the punishment fell with peculiar severity upon them (compare ver. 17 and Jer. xxiii. 1). On the other hand the shepherds, who do not spare the flock, are most probably the native rulers exclusively, as we may gather from ver. 8 and vers. 15-17. The former of these also furnishes conclusive evidence, that by the shepherds we are not to understand merely the civil rulers, as Abarbanel and Grotius do, but the ecclesiastical rulers also, particularly those whom the Lord had appointed in any way to be the leaders of the nation. There is a gradation in the passage, therefore; not only will the people continue to groan, as they do now, under the oppression of foreign tyrants, but their own rulers will also be irretrievably ruined as well as they. The apparently feeble expression, “they spare not," is stronger than any positive statement as to the nature of their conduct would be, especially when applied to the native shepherds, since it indicates at once, that both nature and duty required them to spare their own flock, and therefore it was a severe judgment on the part of God, when they denied it.

Ver. 6. "For I will not spare the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord, and I will give one into the power of another, and into the power of his king; and they lay waste the land, and I will not save out of their hand.”

at the commencement of this verse might refer to ver 5. In this case the futures would have to be taken in the sense of ordinary futures, and the flock of the slaughter would mean one which was afterward to be slaughtered, and not one whose slaughter had already commenced. The present verse would then assign the reason, why the nation was to be given up to

destruction, without its destroyers being chargeable with guilt, provided it resisted this last attempt at its rescue. The Lord, who has long waited for fruit from the bad tree, must at last cut it down. But as the flock is represented in ver. 7 as being already in a miserable condition, at the time when the Lord enters upon his office as shepherd, we have no reason to restrict vers. 4 and 5 to the future. It is better, therefore, to refer to

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the injunction "feed the flock of the slaughter." Make a last attempt to save it, for I cannot and must not any longer suffer its fearful apostasy to go unpunished. , the land, viz., the land of Israel, already referred to. "He is speaking of the land, to which he has already referred, and not of the whole world, as the Jewish commentators have falsely interpreted, in their wish to turn the sentence of God away from themselves to some other quarter." (Jerome).

The explanation of this verse also depends upon a parallel passage in Jeremiah (chap. xix. 9): "And I cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they eat every one the flesh of his friend in their distress and want, which are brought upon them by their enemies and those who seek their life." A twofold cause of their ruin is given, a twofold punishment from the Lord is mentioned, namely the strife among the people themselves which is heightened by suffering, and the oppression of the foe. We find precisely the same thing here; the former is indicated in the expression, "I give them to one another," and the latter in the words, "I give them up to their king.” That we are to understand by the king a foreign oppressor, and not a native ruler, is evident from the fact, that the covenant-nation had no native king in the time of the prophet, and that he never speaks of any such king in his descriptions of the future, with the exception of the Messiah. Contention within and foes without are not only mentioned in the passage quoted from Jeremiah and in Is. ix. 7 sqq. (compare especially vers. 18, 19, and chap. iii. 4), but they are also linked together by our prophet himself in chap. viii. 10, as the two principal methods of punishment employed by God for the chastisement of his people, "for before these days there was no peace from the enemy, and I set every man one against another." This miserable state of things,

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which existed in the nation previous to the commencement of its captivity, is here represented as returning with still greater force on account of its base ingratitude for repeated forgiveness, and its relapse into apostasy. If we turn to the fulfilment, we may see at once that the king is the Roman Emperor. (Compare John xix. 15, where the Jews say, "we have no king but Caesar.") We need not stop to show how literally this prophecy applies to the fate of the Jews subsequent to their rejection of Christ, to the passionate contests of parties within the city and eventually its conquest by the Romans; much less is there any necessity to bring forward the well-known passages from Josephus, which Jahn has provided with so liberal a hand. Bleek is of opinion that the expression "of his king," is a proof that the reference can only be to a native king. But he has overlooked Hosea xi. 5," Assyria is his king." There is probably a distinct allusion to this passage in the words before us, and there is the greater reason for supposing this, from the fact that Assyria is mentioned in chap. x. 10, with evident reference to Hosea, as the representative of the imperial power. (This passage also furnishes a refutation of Hofmann, who most strangely interprets this verse as denoting the ill-treatment of the whole human race; (see Weissagung und Erfüllung i. p. 318). Schmieder says, “we cannot regard these words as relating to the king of the whole land, for every one is to be given into the hand of his king, not of the king who is king of all." But the king of the whole land is also the king of every individual. The mode of expression employed is a peculiar one, which would certainly appear strange if it stood by itself; but it is to be explained from its connexion with the previous clause, "I give them into the power of one another." Those who refer the expression to a native king, however, must fail to notice vers. 1-3, where foreign foes are described as laying waste the land, and also ver. 10, where the principal danger is represented as coming from without, in consequence of the covenant with the nations being broken.-To the word, "the neighbour and the king," might be supplied as the subject. But it is better to understand the king alone as being the subject, or rather the heathen foe concealed behind him. For apparently the words, " and they lay the land waste," are simply an abridgment of the account of the hostile invasion

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