tabernacles of the Most High, that is not executed; but the boaster is cut off in the midst of his vain threatenings. Hence I conclude, that this belongs to the great antitype of the king of Babylon, who certainly perishes in an attack upon Jerusalem in the last conflict. Compare what we have read in the last oracle, where the king of Assyria was in some sort the type; but especially the forty-eighth psalm.

After this sacred song of anticipated triumph, the prophecy draws to its close; and the twenty-second and third verses may be called its application to the literal Babylon-which is followed by a more general application to the last foe.

22. I will stand up against them, saith Jehovah Sabaoth, And I will cut off from Babylon the name and remnant, The increase and the posterity, saith Jehovah.

23. And I will make her the inheritance of the bitterns, pools of

water,

And I will plunge her into the mire of destruction: '

Saith Jehovah Sabaoth.

What follows, introduced by the oath of the Almighty, in reference, perhaps, to the oath in Deut. xxxii. 40, applies the grand burden of the whole to the last enemy. 24. Jehovah Sabaoth hath sworn, saying:

Surely as I devised, so hath it been,

And as I have proposed, shall this stand;

25. According as I broke the Assyrian in my land,
So on my mountains will I trample HIM :

And his yoke shall be removed from off them,
And his burden shall be taken from their shoulders.

1 See Simon, in XUNU.

26. This is the purpose which is purposed concerning the whole

earth,

And this is that hand which is stretched out against all

nations.

27. Surely Jehovah Sabaoth hath purposed; who then shall disannul?

And his hand is stretched out; who then shall turn it back?

It is plain, from the correct rendering of these words, that something is contemplated as already done; and a similar design respecting some other occurrence is declared, fixed, and determined. What these two events are, is next explained: as "I break," or have broken, the Assyrian in my hands, so will I crush HIM: that is, in the usual style of Scripture, the great emphatic adversary. The destruction of Sennacherib would take place in a few years; it is contemplated as past and done.— In like manner, on the mountains of Israel, should the great subject of the foregoing prophecy, typified by the king of Babylon, come to his end. The literal king of Babylon could not be intended; because neither on the mountains, nor in the land of Israel, did any monarch of that race meet his fate. That the Scripture, therefore, be not broken, his antitype must fall there. The twenty-sixth verse, indeed, plainly teaches us to extend the meaning of the whole prophecy beyond the partial history of the then contending and rising kingdoms. 1

1" The circumstance of this judgment being to be executed on God's mountains, is of importance: it may mean the destruction of Sennacherib's army near Jerusalem, and have a still further view.

Compare Ezek. xxxix. 4, and see Lowth on this place of Isaiah."BISHOP LOWTH. Vitringa observes to the same effect, "The schemes of impious ambition ascribed to the Babylonian despot, suit ex

VOL. I.

SECTION VII.

Remarks on the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Chapters.

I PASS over the burdens of Philistia and of Moab in the latter part of the fourteenth, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters: though I am persuaded they have a bearing, in their close, on the glorious kingdom of Messiah," when he shall have had mercy on his land and on his people."

But in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters we have a prophecy that more directly concerns the object of our inquiry. It is entitled the "Burden of Damascus;" but the title by no means corresponds with the prophecy. The subject is the dispersion of the ten tribes, and their restoration in the last days. Damascus being at this time in close confederacy with Israel, their joint destruction is mentioned and contrasted together; and hence the title which the Jewish editors have attached to the prophecy.

1. Lo, Damascus is removed from being a city, And is become a heap of ruins!

actly with the character of the man of sin,' as delineated by Daniel and St. Paul, and seem to indicate that the prophecy extends to much later times than those of the Babylonian empire. The Babylonian monarchs were in some

measure types of Antichrist, as they seem to have affected divine honours. See Judith, viii. 8. Vitringa conceives that there is a manifest allusion to Antichrist in this passage."- HORSLEY.

It should rather be "the wicked."

2. The cities of the vale' are forsaken;

They are given up to the flocks,

And they lie down, and no one puts them in fear.
3. As well shall the fortress cease from Ephraim,
As the kingdom from Damascus :

But the remnant of Damascus shall be
As the bulk of the children of Israel,"
Saith Jehovah Sabaoth.

Damascus and her dependent cities are to become ruins; their populous country is to be desolated. Not less, indeed, would be the desolation of the ten tribes; but here would be the difference: the bulk or mass of the Israelites would be destroyed, and a remnant left. With respect to the Syrians of Damascus, their destruction would be complete; their very remnant would be destroyed. This, however, had not yet taken place when Jeremiah prophesied :† a sufficient indication that we are not to confine the scope of these prophecies to the ravages of the Assyrian king, who had already begun to execute the divine vengeance on these nations.

Having thus contrasted the destinies of these two confederate nations, the prophecy proceeds to show what would befall the ten tribes, the preserved remnant of

this part of the family of Abraham in the latter days;a very small remnant would be left.

4. And it shall come to pass in that day;

That the bulk of Jacob shall be diminished,

And the fatness of his flesh shall become lean;

5. And it shall be as when one hath gathered the standing

crops,

And with his arm hath harvested the ears of corn.

It shall be as the ears that are picked up in the valley of
Rephaim,

And there shall be left in it a gleaning, as when the olive is
shaken;

6. Two or three berries on the top of the highest bough, Four or five on its straggling branches :

Saith Jehovah Sabaoth.

The remainder of the prophecy we must admit to be involved in much obscurity. The cause of this obscurity arises probably from this, that the prophecy has not yet been accomplished. The following verses are, however, so far clear as to foretel the destruction, at a certain period, of all idolatry, and under the symbol of its ancient rites, as I believe, of all false and superstitious modes of worship.

7. In that day shall man look to his Maker,

And his eyes shall be directed to the Holy One of Israel:

8. He shall not look to the altars, the work of his own hand, Neither shall he have regard to that which his fingers have

made,

Nor to the groves, nor to the images.'

May we, then, understand by this, the conversion