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10. And the sons of the strangers shall build thy walls, And their kings shall minister to thee.

For in my wrath I shall smite thee,

And in my favour I shall tenderly cherish thee:

11. And thy gates shall be open continually,

Day nor night shall they be closed.

That the wealth of the nations may be brought to thee, And that their kings may be conducted" through them." 12. For that nation and that kingdom

Which will not serve thee shall perish,

And those nations shall be utterly destroyed.

13. The glory of Lebanon shall come to thee, The fir-tree, the pine, and the box together.

To adorn the place of my sanctuary,

And that I may render the place of my feet glorious.

"The place of my feet."- Does not this signify the chosen spot where God manifests his glory among living men?-descending, as it were, from some higher place. This city and temple, which the survivors of mankind unite in building and enriching, cannot be the heavenly Jerusalem that "hath foundations, whose Maker and Builder is God," and, as we shall find hereafter, hath no temple. To proceed :

14. And the sons of thine oppressors shall come to thee to do homage,

And all that rejected thee shall prostrate themselves at the

soles of thy feet:

15. And they shall call thee the city of Jehovah,

The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

"And their kings royally attended."" And that their kings

may come pompously attended."VITRINGA, LOWTH, and HORSLEY.

Instead of being deserted,

And hated, and no one passing through thee;

I will make thee an eternal boast,

The delight of generation after generation: 16. And thou shalt suck the milk of the nations, Even the breasts of kings shalt thou suck.

And thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, thy Saviour,
And thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

17. Instead of brass, I will bring gold,

And instead of iron, I will bring silver;

And instead of wood, brass,

And instead of stones, iron:

And I will make thy inspectors peace,
And thy governors righteousness.

18. Violence shall no more be heard of in thy land,

Destruction nor injury in thy borders.

And thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,

And thy gates Praise.

19. It shall not continue to be to thee the sun for a light by day, Nor, on her shining, shall the moon give light to thee.

I have endeavoured to give these two last lines as literally as possible. There seems to me to be something emphatic in the expression "to thee," as though the whole world besides must yet depend, as heretofore, for the light of the sun by day, and on the waxing and waning moon for light by night; while the light of the divine Shechinah, in its cloud of glory, resting upon Jerusalem, shall supersede there the necessity of these luminaries. Not that these luminaries are destroyed;that cannot be the meaning of the passage, because when

*

Compare chap. iv. 5.

the duration of Messiah's reign is foretold in the seventysecond psalm, it is expressly said to last as long as the sun and moon endureth. But the divine Shechinah, that light which shone around the chosen apostle of the Gentiles, on his journey to Damascus, at noon day, "above the brightness of the sun," will then illuminate "the place of Jehovah's feet.”

And Jehovah shall be to thee an everlasting light,
And thy Elohim for thy glory.

20. Thy sun shall no more go down,

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Nor shall thy moon be withdrawn:

For Jehovah shall be to thee an everlasting light,

And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.'

21. And thy people shall be all righteous,

They shall inherit the land for ever.

This happiness, being no more to be disturbed, must place it beyond the period of the last invasion of the enemy, whom the Redeemer destroys at his coming. The time of this city must, therefore, be coeval with the reign of Christ and his holy ones upon earth. But it is not the city which they inhabit, for reasons before stated. We are forced then to the conclusion, that, besides the new Jerusalem, which cometh down from God out of heaven, and in some way, to us, perhaps, now inexplicable, renews its intercourse with the world of men in the flesh,- that besides this heavenly city, which is "not of this building," inhabited by glorified spirits,-there will be an earthly

"The days of thy mourning" does not seem to answer in the parallel, as from the style of the prophet one would suspect. should be inclined to suppose that the in bax were formative, and

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that we should derive it from a fluxit, processit. The days of thy flowing, i. e. the days made by the flowing of the solar light, and destroyed by its ebbing.

temple and an earthly city, inhabited by restored Israelites, and rendered the great metropolis of the renovated earth, the object of its boast and admiration, and the source of all its happiness and joy. This holy residence of Jehovah, as it should seem, is far exalted above the other habitations of men. It is illuminated by the Shechinah, which denotes the personal presence of the glorified Redeemer: and we need not hesitate to say his holy myriads" are not far distant: and though we, it may be, can form no adequate idea "how these things can be," this we know, that as Christ dwells and reigns among living men, so will they who are partakers of his kingdom.

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With respect to the restored Israel, which is then, under this dispensation, to be the leading nation upon earth, we read further:—

A shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, shall be glorious:

22. A little one shall become a thousand,

And a small one a powerful nation.

I, Jehovah, will bring it quickly to pass in its season.

This is certainly calculated to impress us with the idea, that Israel, at the era of their becoming the objects of this wonderful dispensation, were little and despised, and that from what appeared at first a very small beginning should the mighty consequences flow: and we may here remark how the error of the ancient Chiliasts, with all its consequent absurdities, arose; in the want of distinguishing between the risen saints of the first resurrection, and the nations in the flesh, which are still to be continued on the earth, to whom, and not to the children of the resurrection, these promises of temporal enjoyments are made.

SECTION XIII.

On the Sixty-first Chapter.

AT the opening of the sixty-first chapter, we are again brought back to the first advent, and the destinies of Israel are once more traced from that most important

éra:

1. THE Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me,
For Jehovah hath anointed me;

He hath sent me to preach glad tidings to the meek,
To bind up the broken-hearted;

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

And the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

2. To proclaim the year of acceptance with Jehovah, And the day of vengeance with our God:

To comfort all that sigh,

3. To visit the mourners of Zion;

To give them a crown instead of ashes,

The oil of rejoicing instead of sorrow,

The clothing of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness.

Our blessed Lord has applied this passage to himself, and told the people in the synagogue of Nazareth, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears."* It was fulfilled in this, that there stood the anointed Messenger of the Father, and the message that he delivered was

To visit with respect, presenting presents. See Bp. Stock.

* Luke, iv. 16.

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