and over her assemblies clouds by day and smoke, and the brightness of flaming fire by night, for above all glory is a covering." Ver. 6. "And a tabernacle shall be for a shadow by day from the heat, and for a refuge and covert from storm and from rain.” Ver. 2. "In that day," i.e., not by any means after the suffering, but in the midst of it, comp. chap. iii. 18, iv. 1, where, by the words "in that day," contemporaneousness is likewise expressed. Parallel is chap. ix. 1 (2), where the people that walketh in darkness seeth a great light. According to Micah v. 2 (3) also, the people are given up to the dominion of the world's powers until the time that she who is bearing has brought forth. Inasmuch as the Messianic proclamation bears the same general comprehensive character as the threatening of punishment, and includes in itself beginning and end, the suffering may partly also reach into the Messianic time. It dismisses from its discipline those who were delivered up to it, gradually only, after they have become ripe for a participation in the Messianic salvation. There cannot be any doubt that, by the "Sprout of the Lord" the Messiah is designated,—an explanation which we בְּעִדָּנָא הַהוּא) meet with so early as in the Chaldee Paraphrast from which even Kimchi did not ,(יְהֵי מְשִׁיחָא דַי לְחֶדְוָה וְלִיקָר venture to differ, which was in the Christian Church, too, the prevailing one, and which Rationalism was the first to give up. The Messiah is here quite in His proper place. The Prophet had, in chap. iii. 12-15, in a very special manner, derived the misery of the people from their bad rulers. What is now more rational, therefore, than that he should connect the salvation and prosperity likewise with the person of a Divine Ruler? comp. chap. i. 26. In the adjoining prophecies of Isaiah, especially in chaps. vii., ix., and xi., the person of the Messiah likewise forms the centre of the proclamation of salvation; so that, a priori, a mention of it must be expected here. To the same result we are led by the analogy of Micah; comp. Vol. i. p. 443—45, 449. Farther-The representation of the Messiah, under the image of a sprout or shoot is very common in Scripture; comp. chap. xi. 1-10, liii. 2; Rev. v. 5. But of decisive weight are those passages in which precisely our word y occurs signation of the Messiah. The two passages, Jer. xxiii. 5: as a de "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I raise unto David a righteous Sprout, and xxxiii. 15: "In those days and at that time shall I cause the Sprout of righteousness to grow up unto David," may at once and plainly be considered as an interpretation of the passage before us, and as a commentary upon it; and that so much the more that there, as well as here, all salvation is connected with this Sprout of Jehovah; comp. Jer. xxiii. 6: "In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is His name whereby He shall be called: The Lord our righteousness." The two other passages, Zech. iii. 8: "Behold, I bring my servant Zemach," and vi. 12: "Behold, a man whose name is Zemach" are of so much the greater consequence that in them Zemach (i.e. Sprout) occurs as a kind of nomen proprium, the sense of which is supposed as being known from former prophecies to which the Prophet all but expressly refers; or as Vitringa remarks on those passages: "That man who, in the oracles of the preceding Prophets (Is. and Jer.) bears the name of 'Sprout.' Of no less consequence, finally, is the parallel passage, chap. xxviii. 5: “In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people." The words and there meet us again. The same is there ascribed to the Lord which is here attributed to the Sprout of the Lord. That can be readily accounted for, only if the Sprout of the Lord be the Messiah. For the Messiah appears everywhere as the channel through which the Lord imparts to His Church all the fulness of His blessings, as the Immanuel by whom the promise given at the very threshold of the Old Testament: "I dwell in the midst of them," is most perfectly realized. "This is the name whereby He shall be called: The Lord our righteousness," says Jeremiah, in the passage quoted.-The "Sprout of the Lord" may designate either him whom the Lord causes to sprout, or him who has sprouted forth from the Lord, i.e., the Son of God. Against the latter interpretation it is objected by Hoffmann (Weissagung und Erfüllung. Th. 1. S. 214): " is an intransitive verb, so that, may be as well connected with a noun which says, who causes to sprout forth, as with one which says whence the thing sprouts forth. Now it is quite obvious that, in the passage before us, the former case applies, and not the latter, inasmuch as one cannot say that something צבי or even some one sprouts forth from Jehovah; it is only with a thing, not with a person that can be connected." But it is impossible to admit that this objection is well founded. The person may very well be conceived of as the soil from which the sprout goes forth. Yet we must indeed acknowledge that the Messiah is nowhere called a Sprout of David. But what decides in favor of the first view are the parallel passages. In Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, the Lord raises up to David a righteous Sprout, and causes Him to grow up unto David. Hence, here too, the Sprout will in that sense only be the Lord's, that he does not sprout forth out of Him, but through Him. In Zech. iii. 8 the Lord brings His servant Zemach; in Ps. cxxxii. 17 it is said: "There I cause a horn to sprout to David," and already in the fundamental passage, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, which contains the first germ of our passage, David says: "For all my salvation. and all my pleasure should He not make it to sprout forth.”As the words "Sprout of the Lord" denote the heavenly origin of the Redeemer, so do the words the earthly one, the soil from which the Lord causes the Saviour to sprout up. These words are by Vitringa and others translated: "the fruit of the earth," but the correct translation is "the fruit of the land." The passages Numb. xiii. 26: "And shewed them the fruit of the land ;" and Deut. i. 25: “And they took in their hands of the fruit of the land, and brought it unto us, and brought us word again, and said, good is the land which the Lord our God doth give us," these two passages are, besides that under consideration, the only ones in which the phrase פרי הארץ occurs; and there is here, no doubt, an allusion to them. The excellent natural fruit of ancient times is a type of the spiritual fruit. To the same result that designates the definite land, that land which, in the preceding verses, in the description of the prevailing corruption, and of the divine judgments, was always spoken of,—to this result we are led by the fact also, that everywhere in the Old Testament where the contrariety of the divine and human origin of the Messiah is mentioned, the human origin is more distinctly qualified and limited. This is especially the case in those passages which, being dependent upon that before us, may be considered as a commentary upon it; in Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, where the Lord raises a Sprout unto David, and Zech. vi. 12, where the man whose name is Zemach (Sprout), grows up out of its soil; comp. Heb. vii. 14, where in allusion to the Old Testament passages of the Sprout-the verb ȧvatéλλe is commonly used of the sprouting forth of the plants (see Bleek on this passage)—it is said: ἐξ Ἰούδα ἀνατέταλκεν ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν, Bengel : ut germen justitiae; farther, Mic. v. 1 (2), where the eternal existence of the Messiah, and His birth in Bethlehem are contrasted with one another; Is. ix. 5, (6), where the words: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given," are contrasted with the various designations of the Messiah according to His divine majesty. This qualification and limitation which everywhere take place, have their ground in the circumstance that the Messiah is constantly represented to the covenant-people as their property; and that He indeed was, inasmuch as salvation went out from the Jews, (John iv. 22), and was destined for the Jews, into whose communion the Gentiles were to be received; comp. my Commentary on Revel. vii. 4. "The Sprout of the Lord," "the fruit of the land," is accordingly He whom the Lord shall make to sprout forth from Israel. The Sprout of the Lord, the fruit of the land is to become to the escaped of Israel for beauty and glory, for exaltation and ornament. The passages to be compared are 2 Sam. i. 19, where Saul and Jonathan are called; farther, Is. xxviii. 5: "In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of beauty, and for a diadem of ornament unto the residue of His people," where the words and are likewise used; finally, chap. xxiv. 16, where, in reference to the Messianic time, it is said: "From the uttermost part of the earth do we hear songs of praise: beauty (y) to the righteous." By the appearance of Christ, the covenant-people, hitherto despised, were placed in the centre of the world's history; by it the Lord took away the rebuke of His people from off all the earth, chap. xxv. 8. There is evidently in these words a reference to the preceding threatening of punishment, especially to chap. iii. 18: "In that day the Lord will take away the ornament," &c.: But Drechsler is wrong in fixing and expressing this reference thus: "Instead of farther running after strange things, Israel will find its glory and ornament in Him who is the long promised seed of Abrahamitic descent:" For it is not the position which Israel takes that is spoken of, but that which is granted to them. The antithesis is between the false צבי glory which God takes away, and the true glory which He gives. The Lord cannot, by any possibility, for any length of time, appear merely taking away; He takes those seeming blessings, only in order to be able to give the true ones. Every taking away is a prophecy of giving." To the escaped of Israel," who, according to the idea of a people of God, and according to the promise of the Law (comp. Deut. xxx. 1, ff.) can never be wanting, as little as it is possible that the salvation should be partaken of by the whole mass of the people; sifting judgments must necessarily go before and along with it. True prophetism everywhere knows of salvation for a remnant only. On, which does not mean "deliverance," so that the abstract would thus here stand for the concrete, but "that which has escaped," comp. remarks on Joel iii. 5, Vol. 1, p. 338. All which now remains is to examine those explanations of this verse which differ from the Messianic interpretation. 1. Following the interpretation of Grotius and others, Gesenius, in his Commentary, understands by the Sprout of the Lord the new growth of the people after their various defeats. His explanation is: "Then the Sprout of Jehovah will be splendid and glorious, and the fruit of the land excellent and beautiful for the escaped of Israel." Fruit of the land he takes in its literal sense, and understands it to mean the product of the land. The same view is held by Knobel: "He becomes for beauty and glory," i.e., the people, having reformed, prosper and form a splendid, glorious state." And Maurer in his Dictionary says: "The Sprout of Jehovah seems to be the morally improved remnant, the new, sanctified increase of the people." But in opposition to sucha view there is, first, the circumstance, that according to it the before and must be understood differently from what which immediately follow and לתפארת and לגאון it is in exactly correspond with them. There are, secondly, the parallel passages chap. xxviii. 5, xxiv. 16, according to which "beauty" is conferred upon the escaped, but they themselves do not become beauty. Finally-It is always most natural to suppose צמח יהוה that and correspond with one another, and פרי הארץ denote the same subject which is here described after his various aspects only. For in the same manner as and go hand in hand, both being taken from the territory of botany, so VOL. II. b |