And the rod of correction' shall pass away altogether, With tabrets, and with lutes, 2 And with waving of banners, is he consumed by them: ' For ere this his funeral pile has been prepared,, Even for the king has it been prepared. He hath made the fiery pyre deep and wide, HE hath laid on much wood; And the breath of Jehovah, as a stream of sulphur, shall kindle it." Dreadful is the divine visitation on the devoted head of the enemy. He that smote with a rod, that is, the last enemy of Israel, who had been permitted to make a breach on the people of God, and to inflict the last chastisement on Jerusalem, is arrested with terror. The rod of correction is then broken for ever. The objects of divine favour are described as an army triumphing over the routed foe. They consume their dead bodies with fire, celebrating their victory with demonstrations of joy. A funeral ́ pile, prepared for the king, is lastly presented to us; but the language forbids us to infer, that a common performance of funeral rites is intended. The fiery pile is none other than " Tophet prepared of old ;" even that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, of which we shall read in subsequent prophecies. The thirty-first chapter I consider as a sequel to the prophecy which we have just considered. That prophecy considered generally the ruinous consequences of Egyptian alliances to the people of God; and connected with that ruin their restoration and felicity in the last days. In this sequel, the immediate consequence of the alliance of the ten tribes with Egypt is bewailed; and the happier state of Judah, who "trusted in the Lord their God," is contrasted with theirs. The divine judgment of the Assyrian is then foretold; not the king, for whom Tophet is prepared, though his type and precursor. His army melts like a lump of wax before the fire, though he himself escapes, to perish by the hand of an assassin in his own country. SECTION XIII. Chapter the Thirty-second. THE oracle with which the thirty-second chapter opens cannot but arrest our attention. 1. Lo! a king shall reign in righteousness, With princes that shall rule in equity; 2. And there shall be a man' as a shelter from the wind, And as a refuge from the flood; Or, with Bp. Stock, "Each man shall be." Each man of the king's counsellors. Like rivulets of water to a dry soil' shall he be,' Like the shade of a great rock in a land fainting with heat.' No other event, besides the reign of Christ and his saints, can be in the contemplation of the Spirit here; nor does there seem any necessity or advantage to suppose an intermediate type in Hezekiah and his government. 1 Indeed, the language will hardly admit of such an application. The parallel passages we have already considered, which predict the glorious reign of Messiah, will sufficiently illustrate these verses. He is that MAN, who shall afford a shelter from every oppression, and from every sorrow, and shall refresh and nourish with everlasting consolations the happy subjects of his reign. This HE does now, indeed, by the secret influences of his Holy Spirit, to the preserved objects of his grace; but there is a time coming, when he will visibly sit upon the throne of his kingdom, to redress the wrongs of his people, and remove their reproach from off the earth. The two following verses, contrasted with chap. vi. 9, show us, that the results of Messiah's second coming will be very different from the reception he met with at the time of his incarnation: "Seeing they saw, but did not perceive; and hearing they heard, but did not understand." But now 3. And the eyes of them that look shall not fail to see, And the ears of them that listen shall hear; 4. And the heart of the rash' shall consider to understand, And the tongue of the stammerer shall be ready to speak Guided by the connexion, I am led to interpret the fifth and following verses of the great enemies of Christ's kingdom in the ages touching on his second coming, and who are at length consumed by the brightness of the Saviour's appearance. 5. No longer shall the apostate' be called a benefactor,' Nor the crafty one be called munificent.* 6. Verily the apostate will utter his apostacy, And his heart will devise wickedness. That he may practise profanation,3 And that he may utter error concerning Jehovah : That he may exhaust the soul of the hungry, 7. The machinations also of the crafty one will be evil, 4 For you, see Job, xxxvi. 19. 5 66 , claudicavit, profanus fuit, profanatus est, vel quod claudi templis locisque sacris arcebantur, erantque proprio sensu profani; vel ex consueta Arabum phrasi, qua claudicare in religione, dicunt errantem, abnegantem, non credentem; unde Syris ethnicus, idolatra."-SIMON. This is the usual word for a heathen in the Syriac translation of the New Testament. Michaelis and others altogether disapprove the sense of hypocrite attributed to this word. To entangle the meek with words of falsehood, We seem to have in this passage, contrasted with the righteous King, the true Benefactor to mankind, two characters as standing opposed to him and his most gracious sovereignty-" the APOSTATE" and the "CRAFTY ONE." The examination of future prophecies must be waited to throw the requisite light on this prediction ; though an intimation of something of the same kind will be found in the Psalms: and I conceive characters have been developed in "Chittim," from whence the last enemy comes, to render these symbols no longer un certain. The word I have rendered " apostate," signifies literally "that which is fallen," "faded," or "decayed," and sometimes signifies "an impious, wicked man." This term, in all probability, gave rise to a similar term in the New Testament, "the man of sin." "He shall be no longer called benefactor.". This implies he had long been called so by a mistaken world. I know no better word to express the original than "benefactor;" but it is very inadequate. It signifies "one who is the rich, the free, the bounteous source of good to others - the gracious dispenser of favours to man:" such as only See on 272, 2 Chron. xix. 6. Bishop Stock has a curious rendering of these lines: "To hamper the meek with lying speeches, and the poor with lawsuits;" but it bids fair to be in part what is exactly in the view of the Spirit of prophecy. |