Ver. 11. "In that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be great, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo."

In this verse and the following the prophet does all he can, to make the sorrow appear as great and as universal as possible. The mourning of Hadadrimmon is not mourning which actually occurred in Hadadrimmon; but those who took part in it, though really in Jerusalem, were in Hadadrimmon in spirit (see 2 Chr. xxxv. 34), and, therefore, it was so far the scene of the mourning, that the cause of it was to be found there,—it was there that the good king Josiah was slain. The following proofs may be adduced, that it is with the mourning for the death of this king, that the lamentation for the pierced one is here compared. (1). The lamentation, to which the prophet refers, must have been one of the most bitter, that had ever occurred in their previous history. Now this can be proved to have been the lamentation for Josiah. According to 2 Chr. xxxv. 25 Jeremiah composed a funeral dirge on the occasion of his death, and other odes were composed and sung by male and female singers. These odes were current in Israel as popular songs, and continued to be so till the chronicler's own time. They were placed in a collection of elegiac odes, relating to the mournful calamities which befel the nation, commencing with the death of Josiah, and which speedily effected its ruin. In this we have a proof not only of the bitterness of the lamentation, but also of the fact that it was preserved in lively remembrance in later ages, even in the period succeeding the captivity.-(2). The lamented one must have been a good king; and the campaign becomes the more appropriate, if he was one who died in a certain sense on account of the sins of the nation. Now both of these are fully realised in Josiah. He is described in 2 Kings xxiii. 25 sqq. as the best of all the kings of Judah. Yet this did not suffice, to turn the Lord from his purposes of destruction. He died a victim, not so much to his own imprudence, in going to war with the powerful king of the Egyptians, as to the sin of his nation. If this had not called down the vengeance of God, He would either have preserved him from the imprudence itself, or have averted its consequences.-(3). The comparison requires, that the slain one should have been a king of Judah, and that

the lamentation should have been in Jerusalem. The words "at Jerusalem" are evidently to be understood in the second clause as well as the first: "The mourning will be great in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon was." We find both of these in the case of Josiah. The king was brought to Jerusalem mortally wounded, and immediately after his arrival there, the last spark of life was extinguished, and the lamentation commenced for him, the beloved one, with whom the throne of Judah appeared to have been carried to the grave (compare 2 Chr. xxxv. 22).'—(4). The places exactly coincide. We find in the Chronicles word for word the same expression as here, Josiah was pierced through "nya." The only "The difference is, that in the passage before us the very spot is mentioned, in which Josiah received his fatal wound." Jerome bears express testimony to the fact, that Hadadrimmon was situated in the valley of Megiddo or Jezreel. Rimmon also occurs as the name of a city in chap. xiv. 10; and we frequently meet with it as the name of a place with some other word prefixed, e.g., Ain Rimmon (compare Simmonis onom. p. 347).

However, notwithstanding the cogency of these reasons, there have not been wanting some who dispute the reference to Josiah, or connect some other with it. The latter is the case in the Chaldee version, where the passage is paraphrased thus:

as the mourning for Ahab, the son of Omri, whom Hadadrimmon the son of Tadrimmon, slew at Ramath in Gilead, and as the mourning for Josiah, the son of Amon, whom Pharaoh Necho slew in the valley of Megiddo." Hadadrimmon is here regarded as the name of the Syrian king, who slew Ahab, derived, according to a custom which undoubtedly pre

1 The apparent contradiction between this passage and the account given in the Book of Kings, in which Josiah is said to have died at Megiddo, is sufficiently explained from the attempt at conciseness on the part of the latter author, whose general design leads him throughout to show less precision, with regard to external circumstances, than the writer of the Chronicles. He does not stop to mention, that there was still a feeble spark of life remaining in the king; but speaks of Megiddo as the scene of his death, because he was mortally wounded and nearly died there.

2 Grotius: "Sicut illa Darii ad Arbella, ab Arbellitide regione, et ad Gaugamela ex oppido aut vico propinquo."

3 Hadadrimmon urbs est juxta Jezreelem, hoc olim vocabulo nuncupata, et hodie vocatur Maximianopolis in campo Mageddon, in quo Josias rex justus a Pharaone cognomento Necho vulneratus est."

vailed among the

Syrians and Babylonians, from Rimmon, the name of an idol. The mourning of Hadadrimmon is understood to mean the mourning caused by Hadadrimmon. But if this be correct, it must be all that is intended; for it is impossible to see how any second allusion can be reconciled with the words of the text, if Hadad-rimmon is to be taken as a proper name. It really looks as if the Chaldee translator placed both in the text, merely because he was undecided which of the two he ought to choose, and not because he regarded them as equally admissible. But no proof can be needed, that the passage does not relate exclusively to Ahab. Of all the tests which we have mentioned, there is only one that applied to him, viz., his death in the valley of Megiddo. Any general and bitter lamentation for this wicked king of the rebellious Israelites cannot for a moment be thought of. He was so universally hated, that no one would wash his polluted blood from the chariot, and they were obliged to engage the services of disreputable persons for this dishonourable employment.-We shall pass over other opinions of a still more trivial character, and merely mention, in addition, the explanation proposed by Hitzig. He has set up two different hypotheses. In the Studien und Kritiken 1830, 1. p. 29, he maintains that the allusion here made is to the death of the wicked Ahaziah (2 Kings ix. 27), an allusion which even Melancthon defended in conjunction with that to the death of Josiah, ("the comparison is taken from the death of the two kings, Ahaziah and Josiah, both of whom were slain near Megiddo"). On the other hand, in his commentary, Hitzig says that Hadadrimmon is the Syriac name for Adonis: "very strikingly (!)," he says, "is the sorrow for their God Jehovah compared to the lamentation for the god Adonis." Both hypotheses are intended to "neutralise" the reference to Josiah, in favour of a preconceived opinion respecting the period, when the second part was composed. Both of them, but especially the latter, show the utter absence of any sense of sacred propriety. In chap. viii. 14 Ezekiel refers to the mourning for Adonis as an idolatrous abomination. The arguments brought forward to prove that Hadadrimmon was a name of Adonis, who is mentioned in the Scriptures under a different name, fall completely to the ground (compare Ezek. viii. 14, &c).-In conclu

sion we simply call attention to the decisive manner, in which this verse disproves the supposition that the previous verse refers to the supreme Deity, and establishes the reference to the Messiah. How perfectly absurd it would be to compare the mourning for the supreme Deity, to whom offence had been given, with the lamentation for King Josiah, who was slain! Yet how appropriate a type of the Messiah we have here! He was slain on account of the sins of his people: his reign was the closing manifestation of mercy on the part of the Lord; unspeakable misery followed immediately afterwards; the lamentation for his death rested upon the mingled feelings of love, and of sorrow for their own sins, which had brought him to death.

Vers. 12-14. The reason why the prophet gives so elaborate a description of the mourning for the pierced one is twofold. His first design is to represent the mourning of the Israelites as true and not merely ceremonial, and their conversion as complete, and deeply rooted in the heart. He effects this by continuing the figurative style with which he commenced, and describing every family as mourning apart, and in every family the men apart, and the women apart. This is intended to show that every family, and every sub-division of every family, would mourn as if the loss were peculiar to themselves. His second design is to state, as emphatically as possible, that the mourning pervades the whole nation, that the conversion does not merely embrace a few of the "poorest of the flock, who followed the good shepherd," as was the case when Christ appeared in his humiliation (chap. xi. 11), but that it is a truly national affair. To effect this, he first of all mentions two of the leading lines; then, to show that the change will thoroughly pervade the whole, from one end to the other, he connects with these two of their principal families; and finally, to give expression to the idea that the whole nation is affected, he adds to these "all the rest of the families." Thus, like Paul in Rom. xi. 26, he represents all Israel as saved, a work which commenced with the crucifixion, has been going on through every age of the Church, and will be fully completed in the last times.

Ver. 12. "And the land mourns, family by family apart, the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart, the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart."

Ver. 13. "The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart, the family of the Shimeite apart, and their wives apart."

Ver. 14. "All the rest of the families, families by families apart, and their wives apart.”

Commentators differ in their opinions as to the specification which is here given by the prophet of the various families, which take part in the lamentation for the Messiah. At first sight there is something plausible in the explanation given by Jerome: "In David we have the royal tribe, i.e. Judah; in Nathan the prophetic order; in Levi the priests, for the priesthood sprang from him; in Shimei the teachers, for the different orders of magistrates sprang from this tribe. The prophet does not mention the other tribes, which were not possessed of any peculiar privileges." But on closer examination, his opinion is found to be quite untenable. The principal objection is that the family of the Shimeite cannot possibly mean the tribe of Simeon. In the first place, the patronymic of Simeon is not vy, but Shimeoni (Josh. xxi. 4, 1 Chr. xxvii. 16), in addition to which we find only the periphrastic expression jip; and secondly, if no tribes are mentioned here but those which possessed some peculiar privilege, the tribe of Simeon is quite out of place. So far was this tribe from having any peculiar privilege, that it did not even receive a separate province like all the rest of the tribes, with the exception of that of Levi, which was richly compensated for the want of it by a prerogative of a different kind.

That the "different orders of magistrates" were chosen from this tribe is a Jewish fiction, whose origin may be traced without any difficulty. The Jerusalem Targum paraphrases Gen. xlix. 7 thus: "I will divide the tribe of Simeon, that teachers of the law may be placed in the assembly of Jacob, and I will scatter the tribe of Levi" (for other Jewish quotations see Heidegger hist. patriarch. ii. p. 484). In this passage, from Jacob's blessing, we have the origin of the fable. The Rabbins, overlooking the fact that it was a sufficient blessing for a tribe to belong to the people of God and not to be cut off from the nation, and reading in Gen. xlix. 28, "Jacob blessed them,"