of all nations to the true religion? This, we know, will be the result of that dispensation of the kingdom, which restores Israel in the last days. If this statement be right, what follows appertains to those times:

9. And in that day shall the cities of HIS strength become As the gleanings of the harvest and of the highest bough, Which they left before the face of the children of Israel, And "the earth" shall become a desolation.

We may justly ask, to whom does the pronoun his refer? I would answer, from the analogy of prophecy, to him to whom the cities belong to the great enemy of God's people. The day shall come when the cities of the adversary shall be destroyed with as small a remnant as the more immediate enemy, the Assyrian, type of the last destroyer, should have left of the cities of Israel.

The next verse, perhaps, assigns the cause of this calamity. The last enemy, as we know from former prophecies, would appear in the character of an apostate from the true religion.

10. For thou hast forgotten the Elohim of thy salvation, Neither hast thou remembered thy strong Maker.'

What follows is certainly most mysterious.

11. Wherefore, when thou shalt have planted thy pleasant plantations,

And shalt have set them with cuttings from a foreign soil:

Though' in the day of thy planting thou makest it to

grow,

And in the morning of thy setting thou makest it to shoot;

The harvest is taken away in the day of the inundation,'
And the grief is desperate.

We can only conjecture to what this will refer. Perhaps it is addressed to the remnant of Israel, respecting some early and premature attempt at their restoration; or to some great power, endeavouring to form a settlement of Israelites in the land of promise:* the fulfilment can alone disclose. The expedition or undertaking, whatever it may be, bids fair at first, but ends in almost total disappointment. The cause of this disappointment, the destruction of the vineyard at the very season of its harvest, seems to be stated in the next verses; and from a comparison of former prophecies, it appears to be the great inroad of the last enemy, so often mentioned under the metaphor of an inundation.

12. Oh! this tumultuous noise of many nations,

They sound like the tumultuous noise of the seas:

And this roaring of the nations,

As the roaring of mighty waters they roar !

This is so much like the former symbolical representation of the last inundation, "overflowing in righteousness," in the passages referred to below, † that we can scarcely mistake its meaning: and the final catastrophe of those enemies that destroy this vineyard by divine permission, is exactly similar.

"The produce is gone in the

the [ביום נחלה] day of inundation

"And the calamity is incur able."-HORSLEY.

day of the torrent,

Compare Psalm cvii. 36, &c.

+ Psalms xxix. xlvi. 1. Isaiah, x. 22. Compare viii. 22.

13. The nations roar like the roaring of many waters; But He rebuketh them, and they flee far

away.

And he driveth them as the chaff of the mountains before

the wind,

And as the gossamer before the storm.

14. It is the time of evening, and behold alarm!

Before the morning, they are no more!

This is the portion of them that spoil us,
The lot of them that plunder us.

The eighteenth chapter, I conceive to be a continuation of the same series of predictions, relating, as to their principal object, to the dispersion of the ten tribes, their preservation, and their restoration. 1

After the former prophecy respecting the successful invasion, and final destruction of the many nations, we seem to have another nation brought upon the scene of the prophetical vision, as an instrument of real good to the dispersed and disappointed Israelites.

1. AH! country, continually extending the shadow of its wings,' Which is beyond the rivers of Cush!

2. That sendeth ambassadors by sea,

Even in light vessels' on the face of the waters.

Respecting the nation here meant, our hopes will, perhaps, precipitate our judgment. It is evidently, however, a great seafaring people, whose light sailing vessels cover the ocean. "A land," says Bishop Horsley, spreading wide the shadow of its wings"-" some great people, famous for the protection they should afford." Perhaps a modern poet might designate such a nation

"The fond ally,

That fights for all."

The situation of this country is, indeed, very obscurely pointed out; "beyond," or " on the other side," or "more remote than the rivers of Cush." By "the rivers of Cush" has generally been understood the Nile; and it has certainly a good title to be called a river of Cush; for a colony of the Arabian Cushites, passing over the Red Sea, had in very ancient times established a flourishing kingdom in Ethiopia, the country from whence this river flows into Egypt. This may be one river of Cush, and some more remote river of Africa another, if we are to look in this direction for this protecting nation. It would, then, be far off to the west. But two other celebrated

'Literally, "vessels of papyrus," navigium ex papyro confectum; de quo navigiorum genere, v. PLINIUM, vii. c. 57; vi. c. 22. Compare лan, Exodus, ii. 3. Some, after the Septuagint, επιστολας βιο

Bivas, understand "books,” and consider them as the objects that are sent.-FABER.

But an anachronism, in respect of the use of papyrus, will, I ima、 gine, be detected here.

* Chap. xviii,

rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, have an equal, and perhaps superior claim to be called "the rivers of Cush." For Cush was the father of the famous Nimrod, who founded his kingdom on the former of these rivers; and from thence Ashur "went out," and erected, on the latter river, the capital of the Assyrian empire. In case we prefer this interpretation, the situation of this protecting country—at least, in some sort, the scene of its power and operations,―must be looked for in the remoter regions of the East; and the ten tribes, if they are the part of Israel intended, are certainly to be looked for in this direction.1

A description follows of the people to whom these messengers, that pass the sea in their swift ships, are to go:

Go ye, swift messengers,

To a nation scattered' and cast away,'

To a people feared from that day and henceforward;"