official: it cannot, without a most unnatural perversion of the phrase denote unto his death. And after sixty nine weeks must mean immediately after or at the close of sixty nine weeks: for, if after is to be taken in a large sense, this notation of time is altogether indefinite and therefore evidently useless; because, if Messiah be not cut off precisely at the end of the sixty nine weeks, but at the end of sixty nine weeks and some additional portion of time (no matter whether it be longer or shorter), it is not easy to discover the utility of specifying the exact term of sixty nine weeks, when the prophet might have expressed himself with perfect accuracy by saying sixty nine weeks and one year, two years, half a week, or whatever might be the additional portion of time. Since then the coming of the Messiah is fixed to the end of the sixty nine weeks, his death cannot likewise be at the end of them: for that would make his coming synchronize with his death, and thus allow no time for the discharge of his prophetic office. To this may be added, that it can be positively shewn, as it will hereafter be shewn *, that his death takes place at the end of the seventy weeks: hence it plainly cannot also take place at the end of the sixty nine weeks; which we Chap. vi. § I. 1. (1.) (2.) (3.) 2. This point has already been briefly touched upon in Chap. iii. § I. 3. must must conclude (unless we make the word after per fectly nugatory and indefinite), if we translate the passage after the weeks seven and the weeks sixty and two Messiah shall be cut off but not for himself. In fact, the most strenuous advocates for the unnatural supposition, that unto the Messiah means unto the death of the Messiah, even after they have adopted the expedient of computing by lunar years of 360 days each, are still unable to make the crucifixion fall out, where according to their scheme it ought to fall out, at the close of the sixty nine weeks: for Bp. Lloyd, Mr. Marshall, and Mr. Butt, are all obliged to acknowledge, that it happens, not at the end of the sixty nine weeks, but nearly a year after their expiration. But, if it be thus evident, that the death of the Messiah does not take place at the close of the sixty nine weeks; and, if it be acknowledged, that the word after cannot, without running into a most unwarrantable licence of interpretation, be understood in what Dr. Prideaux calls a large sense, but what in reality is just the sense which it may be convenient for an expositor to assign to it: then it will follow, that to render 7' passively, and to understand it to relate to the cutting off of the Messiah by a violent death, must necessarily be erroneous. If then it cannot be rendered passively as the future of Niphal, it must be rendered actively as the future of Kal. It must therefore relate to something that the Messiah does, not to what he suffers: a conclusion indeed, which inevitably must be drawn from the circumstance of the thing expressed by synchronizing with the coming of the Messiah, and preceding his death at the end of the seventy weeks. 9. The word 'n has usually been understood in the physical sense of destroying; and, whatever nominative case may be ascribed to it, has been translated shall destroy, and has been supposed to relate to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus. I rather incline to interpret it in a moral sense, and to consider it as assigning the reason why Messiah should cut off from himself by divorce his mystic wife the Levitical church. This verb, both in Pihel and Hiphil, signifies not only transitively to corrupt, but likewise intransitively to be corrupt or to act corruptly. Thus, in Pihel, we have y nn thy people hath acted corruptly*: and thus, in Hiphil, the conjugation here used the people העם משחיתים by Daniel, we have were acting corruptly †. Hence, in a similar manner, I translate the future Hiphil n shall act corruptly or shall corrupt themselves. 10. In our common English version, the first clause at the beginning of the 26th verse is arranged Exod. xxxii. 7. ↑ 2 Chron. xxvii, 2. and and translated Messiah shail be cut off, but not for himself; and the second clause, and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. According to my arrangement and translation, the first clause is Messiah shall cut off by a bill of divorce, so that they shall be no more his, both the city and the sanctuary; and the second clause, the people of the prince that shall come shall act corruptly. In this arrangement of the two clauses, though not in the translation of them, I have followed Dr. Blayney: and, for the propriety of it, in addition to the reasons already assigned, the word 1 and the end thereof, in the following or third clause of the verse, affords a fresh argument. For, if the other arrangement be adopted, it is not easy to assign the antecedent, to which the pronoun thereof has reference. The Messiah it could not be for how could his end be with a flood? Nor could it be the city and sanctuary: for then the pronoun should have been in the plural, instead of the singular, number. Nor could it be the city singly, as including the sanctuary: because y the city is feminine, but the pronoun is masculine. Nor lastly could it be the people, if by people were meant the Roman army; nor yet their Commander: because neither did he, nor his army, come to an end by a flood; but, on the contrary, succeeded in utterly destroying Jerusalem. But, if by the people of the prince that should come be intended the Jewish nation, which it plainly must be according to the present arrangement, but which it no less plainly cannot be according to the other arrangement; then both the grammar is duly preserved, and the import of the prophetic imagery remains unviolated. For we obtain a regular ante'cedent for thereof, namely the Jewish nation: and the end of that nation was by a flood; which, as it is well known, signifies in the prophetic language a hostile invasion; that, like a mighty inundation, sweeps away all before it, and spreads havock and desolation over a whole country * For this argument I am indebted to Dr. Blayney. He himself indeed understands p to mean the cutting off or the excision of the Jewish nation, not the end or termination of it. But I doubt whether the word will bear such a translation. The end is called pp, because it cuts off a term of existence from the preceding period; not because the nation, to which the substantive is applied, is cut off by hostile excision. Had the Jewish nation quietly and without bloodshed merged into the Roman empire, its end would just have completely arrived, and that end might just as properly have been expressed by the word rp, as it is at present. The violence of its downfall is described, not by rp which simply denotes its termination, but by o the deluge or hostile invasion that effected it. Indeed he himself immediately after translates the very same word, when connected with war, by the end; as thus, unto the end of a war. 11. The |