before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day.The laws, which were afterwards given in the plains of Moab, are also included in the expression "in Horeb." For they were merely a continuation and further development; the foundation was fully laid at Sinai.-In the injunction "remember," there is an allusion to chap. iii. 7, "from the days of your fathers ye have gone back from my commandments." It is not without cause that the prophet exhorts them. He is not merely warning them against a future apostasy. The axe is already laid at the root. Let Israel of its own accord remember the law, before the Lord arouses it from its sleep of forgetfulness by the thunders of his righteousness.

Ver. 5 (chap. iii. 23). “Behold, I send you Elias, the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.”

There can be no doubt whatever, that Elias the prophet is identical with the messenger, whom the Lord will send to prepare the way before him (chap. iii. 1). If, then, we have already proved in our remarks upon that verse, that the reference there is to an ideal messenger, the personified preacher of repentance, the same proofs are equally valid in connexion with the passage before us. The same idea is expressed in both cases: before God proves himself to be the covenant God by inflicting punishments and bestowing blessings, he shows that he is so, by placing within the reach of the children of the curse the means of becoming the children of the blessing. Of course we must not separate the power of the Spirit of God from the outward mission of his servants, and thus change the gift into mockery. There was no necessity to allude particularly to this, because it always accompanies the outward preaching, and in fact is in exact proportion to it; so that we may infer with certainty the amount of inward grace, from the extent to which the outward means of grace are enjoyed in any age.

1 The prophet appears to have had Deut. iv. particularly in his mind. The whole chapter contains an earnest injunction to fidelity in the observance of the law. and O are connected together in vers. 1 and 8, and Horeb is mentioned in ver. 15. Compare also ver. 5, "Behold I have taught you law and judgments, even as the Lord, my God, commanded me;" and ver. 14, " And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you laws and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it; (see Lev. xxvi. 46).

The only point which we have to examine, in connection with this passage, has reference to the one thing which is peculiar to it, the designation of the messenger by the name of Elias. The reason for this must be sought in the prophet's own description of the office and work of the messenger and of Elias, namely, "to prepare the way of the Lord," and "turn back the heart of the fathers to the children and of the children to the fathers." Hence the messenger, as a reformer raised up by God, is called by the name of that one of the earlier messengers of God, who exceeded all the rest in spirit and power, who lived in a remarkably corrupt age, and whose rejection was followed by a particularly terrible day of the Lord, viz. first the calamities inflicted by the Syrians, and then the captivity of Israel, the ban, with which the land was smitten, because it did not realise its destination to be a holy land. The name of Elias recalled all these circumstances; when the people heard this name, they were wakeened out of their dream of self-righteousness, and found themselves placed upon a level with the corrupt generation of the time of Elias. The coming of the Lord in that former age afforded a firm foundation for his future coming. Again, the reason why Elias should be especially selected, becomes still more obvious, if we trace the view, which is very perceptible in the historical books, that he was the head of the prophetic order in the Israelitish kingdom, or rather in a certain sense the only prophet, inasmuch as his successors merely received the spirit indirectly;—a view, to which we are also led by the striking resemblance which the acts of Elisha bore to his own. We find a perfectly analogous resemblance in the case of Isaac and Abraham, Joshua and Moses. In 2 Chr. xxi. 12 there is brought to the king a writing from "Elijah the prophet," for Elijah as an individual had departed this life long before. In 1 Kings xix. 15, 16, the Lord says to Elijah," thou shalt go and anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, and Jehu, the son of Nimshi, shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel." Elijah himself did not perform either of these acts; but Elisha anointed one (2 Kings viii. 13), and a pupil of Elisha the other (2 Kings ix. 4—6). Elisha, who modestly acknowledged that his relation to God was not originally the same as that of his leader, desired the portion of the first-born in his spiritual inheritance (m, 2 Kings ii. 9).

Hence he also looks upon the rest of the prophets as the spiritual children and heirs of Elijah, and as standing in the same relation to him, in which the seventy elders, upon whom God put of the spirit of Moses, stood to Moses himself. According to 2 Kings, ii. 15, the sons of the prophets said, "the spirit of Elijah (that is, the spirit of God in the particular form which it assumed in Elijah) doth rest upon Elisha." And as an outward sign that his ministry was merely a continuation of that of Elijah, Elisha received his mantle. But a similar relation as this may be found existing altogether apart from scriptural ground. Look for example at the connexion which existed between Luther and Jonas or Bugenhagen, or again between the reformers generally and the churches of which they were the founders. It might also be shown that since this relation is an appointment of God himself, the words which are so frequently abused, "be not the servants of men," do not apply to it at all; though sin creeps into this, as into every thing human. But this does not form part of our present subject. We merely call attention to the fact, that if, according to these proofs, we are not limited to one single historical character, even when the Elijah of former times is referred to, but everything is attributed to Elijah, which constituted a continuation of his mission till the coming of the terrible day upon Israel, there is still less ground for seeking the Elijah of the future exclusively in one individual.-We have already observed that the prophet intentionally borrows from Joel (ii. 31), the expression, "Before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." The day foretold by Joel, the judgment on the enemies of the kingdom of God, was ardently desired. By the announcement of the coming of a preacher of repentance (ueTávola), the prophet shows how wrong it is for them to identify themselves with the kingdom of God, and expressly declares in the following verse, that, if his preaching makes no impression, the great day will inevitably be terrible to those who fancy themselves the supporters, but are in reality the enemies of the kingdom of God.-Our remarks on ver. 19 are also applicable to the "day of the Lord" alluded to here.

HISTORY OF THE EXPOSITION OF VER. 5.

1. Among the Jews. It is well known that, on the strength of this passage, the Jews anticipated the re-appearance of Elijah in the flesh, before the coming of the Messiah. The earliest traces of this view we find in the Book of Wisdom (chap. xlviii. 10),1 and the Septuagint, in which is rendered Ἠλίαν τὸν Θεσβίτην instead of Ἠλίαν τὸν προφήτην. The prophet adds for the express purpose of showing that the point in question is not the person of Elijah, but his office, his TVεûμa and dúvapis; but Jesus the son of Sirach, and the translators of the Septuagint, change the official allusion into a personal one. It is true that, if we had nothing but this single fact, we could not draw any certain inference from it, any more than we should be able to conclude from the word if it actually stood in the Hebrew text, that the prophet referred to the personal re-appearance of Elijah, seeing that nothing is more common, than for the recurrence of the essence of a thing to be figuratively represented, as the re-appearance of the form in which the previous manifestation had taken place. But since we find the belief in a personal coming of Elijah the prevailing one at a later period, we are warranted in attributing demonstrative force to the passages referred to. There are several codices of the Septuagint, it is true, in which we find the reading Tòv poþýτη, and it is also to be found in the Ed. Complut. But this is undoubtedly an unintentional emendation.

The passages in the New Testament, which serve to show that the expectation of Elijah was very prevalent among the people at that time, are well known. We shall have occasion to

1 The fallacy of the arguments adduced by Bretschneider against the genuineness of this passage, which has every external authority in its favour, is very obvious.

2 It was equally intentional on his part, that, before mentioning Elijah, he spoke of the messenger of the Lord without any further personal allusion. This is sufficient to prove that he did not refer to the reappearance of Elijah in the flesh. Chap. iv. 5 must evidently be explained from chap. iii. 1. If the prophet wished to be understood as announcing a personal appearance, he ought to have mentioned it at the commencement of the third chapter.

notice them more particularly by and by.-In the Dialog. c. Tryphone c. 40 (ed. Ven. p. 152) Trypho says, “We all expect that the Messiah will be born a man of men, and that Elias will anoint him when he comes." And from the fact that Elias has not yet come, he argues that Jesus is not the Christ. The passages from later Jews may be found collected in Frischmuth (de Eliae adventu, Jena 1659; reprinted in the Thesaurus antiquus) and in Eisenmeyer (Book ii. chap, 13). In the Book Chissuk Emunah (p. 1, c. 39, in Wagenseil's tela ii. 318), Rabbi Isaac says, "It was well known in the nation of Israel, that the Messiah would not be manifested till Elias the prophet had come, as we find from this passage (in Malachi)." According to the Schulchan Aruch (in Frischmuth) the Jews were in the habit of remembering Elias every Sabbath, and praying that he might at length come and announce their redemption, which they regarded for the most part as the sole object of his coming, thus erring more grievously with regard to his work than they did even with regard to his person. And Abenezra concludes his commentary on Malachi with the words, "deus propter misericordiam suam vaticinium suum impleat, finemque adventus illius acceleret."

The sole origin of this view was the crude literality which characterised the expositions of the Jews, the "realism" which is so strongly recommended in the present day. The earlier Christian commentators very properly brought forward such passages as 2 Kings ix. 31, where Jezebel addresses Jehu as Zimri the murderer of his lord, a new Zimri (see Thenius on this passage); and Is. i. 10, "Ye rulers of Sodom, ye people of Gomorrha;" not to mention such expressions as "alter erit tum Tiphys," and "Homerus aut Maro pro optimo poeta, Maecenas pro benefico in doctos, Cato pro homine severo," &c. They also appealed to a passage in Jalkut Chadasch, where the current phrase Pinchas est Elias, which many employed with equally rude literality, is interpreted as merely denoting an ideal identity: "Hoc est, quod dixerunt Rabbini b. m. : Pinchas est Elias. Non est res secundum litteram intelligenda, &c., sed quia Pinchas venit, ut in ordinem redigeret Nadab et Abihu, ita etiam Elias, quod ille reliquit in ordinem redigendum, id ipse perfecit." At the same time there were not wanting men of intelligence, who