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the name of Shearjashub affords the example of a sign (comp. chap. viii. 18), which is taken from the territory of the distant future. It is true that commonly is not used of future things; but this has its reason not in the idea of N, but solely in the circumstance that, ordinarily, the future cannot serve as a sign of assurance. But it is quite obvious that, in the present case, the Messianic announcement could afford such a sign, and that in a far higher degree than the future facts given as signs in Exod. iii., and Is. xxxvii. The kingdom of glory which has been promised to us, forms to us also a sure pledge that in all the distresses of the Church, the Lord will not withhold His help from her. But the Covenant-people stood in the same relation to the first appearance of Christ, as we do to the second.

(4.) "The passage chap. viii. 3, 4, presents the most marked resemblance to the one before us. If there the Messianic explanation be decidedly inadmissible, it must be so here also. The name and birth of a child serves, there as here, for a sign of the deliverance from the Syrian dominion. If then there the mother of the child be the wife of the Prophet, and the child a son of his, the same must be the case here also." But it is a priori improbable that the Prophet should have given to two of his sons names which had reference to the same event. To this must be added the circumstance, that the time is wanting for the birth of two sons of the Prophet. Before Immanuel knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, the country of both the hostile kings shall be desolated, chap. vii. 15; before Mahershalalhashbaz knows to cry My Father, My Mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried before the king of Assyria, chap. viii. 4. The two births hence coincide. At all events, it is impossible to find the time for a double birth by the same mother. Several interpreters (Gesenius, Hitzig, Hendewerk,) assume the identity of Immanuel and Mahershalalhashbaz; but this is altogether inadmissible, even from the difference of the names. It is the less admissible to assume a double name for the child, as the name Shearjashub plainly enough shews that the Prophet was in earnest with the names of his children; and indeed, unless they had been real proper names, there would have existed no reason at all for giving them to them. To have assigned several names to one child would have weakened their

power. The agreement must, therefore, rather be explained from the circumstance, that it was by the announcement in chap. vii. 14 that the Prophet was induced to the symbolical action in chap. viii. 3, 4. He has, in chap. vii. 14, given to the despairing people the birth of a child, who would bring the highest salvation for Israel, as a pledge of their deliverance. The birth of a child and its name were then required as an actual prophecy of help in the present distress,-a help which was to be granted with a view to that Child who not only indicates, but grants deliverance from all distresses, and to whom the Prophet reverts in chap. ix., and even already in chap. viii. 8.-Moreover, besides the agreement there is found a thorough difference. In chap. vii. the mother of the child is called whereby a virgin only can be designated; in chap. viii., "the prophetess." In chap. vii. there is not even the slightest allusion to the Prophet's being the father; while in chap. viii. this circumstance is expressly and emphatically pointed out. In chap. vii. it is the mother who gives the name to the child; in chap. viii. it is the Prophet. Far closer is the agreement of chap. ix. 5 (6) with chap. vii. 14. It especially appears in the circumstances that in neither of them is the father of the child designated; and, farther, in the correspondence of Immanuel with, God-Hero.

(5.) "Against the Messianic explanation, and in favour of that of a son of the Prophet, is the passage chap. viii. 18 where the Prophet says that his sons have been given to him for signs and wonders in Israel." But although Immanuel be erroneously reckoned among the sons of the Prophet, there still remain Shearjashub and Mahershalalhashbaz. The latter name refers,

in the first instance only, to Aram and Ephraim specially; or the general truth which it declares is applied to this relation only. But, just as the name Shearjashub announces new salvation to the prostrate people of God, so the second name announces near destruction to the triumphing world hostile to God; so that both the names supplement one another. As signs, these two sons of the prophet pointed to the future deliverance and salvation of Israel, and the defeat of the world; and the very circumstance that they did so when, humanly viewed, all seemed to be lost, was a subject for wonder. But that we can in no case make Immanuel a third son of the prophet, we have already proved.

Ver. 15. Cream and honey shall he eat, when he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good. Ver. 16. For before the boy shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the country shall be forsaken of the two kings of which thou standest in awe.

The older Messianic explanation has, in these two verses, exposed itself to the charge of being quite arbitrary. Most of the interpreters assume that, in ver. 15, the true humanity of the Saviour is announced. The name Immanuel is intended to indicate the divine nature; the eating of milk and honey the human nature. Milk and honey are in this case considered as the ordinary food for babes; like other children, He shall grow up, and, like them, gradually develope. Thus Jerome says: "I shall mention another feature still more wonderful: That you may not believe that he will be born a phantasm, He will use the food of infants, will eat butter and milk." "In says: order that here we may not think of some spectre, the Prophet states signs of humanity from which he proves that Christ indeed put on our flesh." In the same manner Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Basil, and, in our century, Kleuker, and Rosenmüller speak.— But this explanation is altogether overthrown by ver. 16. Most interpreters assume, in the latter verse, a change of subject; by

Calvin

not Immanuel, but Shearjashub who accompanied the prophet, is to be understood. According to others, it is not any definite boy who is designated by ; but it is said in general, that the devastation of the hostile country would take place in a still shorter time than that which elapses between the birth of a boy and his development. Such is Calvin's view. But the supposition of a change of subject is altogether excluded even by the circumstance that one and the same quality, the distinction between good and evil, is in both verses ascribed to the subject. Others, like J. H. Michaelis, refer ver. 16 also to the Messiah, and seek to get out of the difficulty by a jam dudum. It is not worth while to enter more particularly upon these productions of awkward embarassment. All that is required is to remove the stone of offence which has caused these interpreters to stumble. Towards this, a good beginning has already been made by Vitringa, without, however, completely attaining the object. In ver. 14, the Prophet has seen the birth of Messiah as present. Holding fast this idea, and expanding it, the Prophet makes him who has been

born accompany the people through all the stages of its existence. We have here an ideal anticipation of the real incarnation, the right of which lies in the circumstance that all blessings and deliverances which, before Christ, were bestowed upon the covenant-people, had their root in His future birth, and the cause of which was given in the circumstance that the covenant-people had entered upon the moment of their great crisis, of their conflict with the world's powers, which could not but address a call to invest the comforting thought with, as it were, flesh and blood, and in this manner to place it into the midst of the popular life. What the prophet means, and intends to say here is this, that, in the space of about a twelvemonth, the overthrow of the hostile kingdoms would already have taken place. As the representative of the cotemporaries, he brings forward the wonderful child who, as it were, formed the soul of the popular life. At the time when this child knows to distinguish between good and bad food, hence, after the space of about a twelvemonth, he will not have any want of nobler food, ver. 15, for before he has entered upon this stage, the land of the two hostile kings shall be desolate. In the subsequent prophecy, the same wonderful child, grown up into a warlike hero, brings the deliverance from Asshur, and the world's power represented by it. We have still to consider and discuss the particulars. What is indicated by the eating of cream and honey? The erroneous answer to this question, which has become current ever since Gesenius, has put everything into confusion, and has misled expositors such as Hitzig and Meier to cut the knot by asserting that ver. 15 is spurious. Cream and honey can come into consideration as the noblest food only; the eating of them can indicate only a condition of plenty and prosperity. "A land flowing with milk and honey" is, in the books of Moses, a standing expression for designating the rich fulness of noble food which the Holy Land offers. A land which flows with milk and honey is, according to Numb. xiv. 7, 8, a "very good land." The cream is, as it were, a gradation of milk. Considering the predilection for fat and sweet food which we perceive everywhere in the Old Testament, there can scarcely be anything better than cream and honey; and it is certainly not spoken in accordance with Israelitish taste, if Hofmann (Weiss. i. S. 227) thus paraphrases the sense: "It is not because he does

not know what tastes well and better, (cream and honey thus the evil!) that he will live upon the food which an uncultivated land can afford, but because there is none other." In Deut. xxxii.

13, 14, cream and honey appear among the noblest products of the Holy Land. Abraham places cream before his heavenly guests, Gen. xviii. 8. The plenty in honey and cream appears in Job xx. 7, as a characteristic sign of the divine blessing of which the wicked are deprived. It is solely and exclusively vers. 21 and 22 that are referred to for establishing the erroneous interpretation. It is asserted that, according to these verses, the eating of milk and honey must be considered as an evil, as the sad consequence of a general devastation of the land. But there are grave objections to any attempt at explaining a preceding, from a subsequent passage; the opposite mode of proceeding is the right one. It is altogether wrong, however, to suppose that vers. 21, 22, contain a threatening. In those verses the Prophet, on the contrary, allows, as is usual with him, a ray of light to fall upon the dark picture of the calamity which threatens from Asshur; and it could indeed, a priori, be scarcely imagined that the threatening should not be interrupted, at least by such a gentle allusion to the salvation to be bestowed upon them after the misery (comp. in reference to a similar sudden breaking through of the proclamation of salvation in Hosea, Vol. I. p. 175, and the remarks on Micah ii. 12, 13); but then he returns to the threatening, because it was, in the meantime, his principal vocation to utter it, and thereby to destroy the foolish illusions of the God-forgetting king. It is in the subsequent prophecy only, chap. viii. 1-ix. 6 (7) that that which is alluded to in vers. 21, 22, is carried out. The little which has been left-this is the sense the Lord will bless so abundantly, that those who are spared in the divine judgment will enjoy a rich abundance of divine blessings. Parallel is the utterance of Isaiah in 2 Kings xix. 30: "And the escaped of the house of Judah, that which has been left, taketh root downward, and beareth fruit upward." -If thus the eating of cream and honey be rightly understood, there is no farther necessity for explaining, in opposition to the rules of grammar, by "(only) until he knows" (comp. against this interpretation Drechsler's Comment.). can only mean : "belonging to his knowledge, i.e., when he knows." Good and evil are, as early as Deut. i. 39: "Your sons who to-day do not know