13 Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thec, A.C. 722. in making thee desolate because of thy sins.

14 Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take hold, but shalt not deliver; and that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.

15 Thou shalt & sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt & neut
tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil ; Hag. i. Ei
and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.

16 C For * the statutes of " Omri are kept, and all the time he dotik
works of the house of i Ahab, and ye walk in their coun-
sels; that I should make thee a + desolation, and the inha- 25, 26.
bitants thereof an hissing : therefore ye shall bear the re- 30, &c.
proach of my people.

much keep the,
&c.
h 1 Kings xvi.

il Kings xvi. tör, astonishMent.

MICAH VII.

soul,

1 The church, complaining of her small number, 3 and the general corruption,
3 patteth her confidence not in man, but in God. 8 She triumpheth over her
prenies. 14 God comforteth her by promises, 10 by confusion of the enemies,
18 and by his mercies.

i Woe is me! for I am as I when they have gathered the Hcb. the
summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage : there summer.
is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.

2 The Sgood man is perished out of the earth: and Ps xii. !. there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for Or, Roviny,

or, merciful. blood ; they hunt every man his brother with a net. 3 ¢ That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth || Þis mischievous desire : so they | Heh, the

mischief of his wrap it up

4 The best of them is a brier : the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge : the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh ; now shall be their perplexity.

5. Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide : keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.

6 For 'the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter . Matt. x. 21, riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against xii. sj. her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own

7 Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for
the God of my salvation : my God will hear me.

8 Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall,
I shall arise ; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a
9 I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have

house.

light unto me.

* Or, And thou wilt see her that is mine enemy,

10. & cxv. 2. Joel ii. 17.

down.

Or, after that it hath been.

A. C. 722. sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute

judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I
shall behold his righteousness.

10 * Then she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shame

shall cover her which said unto me, m Where is the LORD and cover her thy God? mine eyes shall behold her : now +shall she be mpshani.. trodden down as the mire of the streets.

11 In the day that thy walls are to be built, in that day + Heb. she shall the decree be far removed. shall be for a treading 12 In that day also he shall come even to thee from AsAinos ix. syria, I and from the fortified cities, and from the fortress 16r, even to. even to the river, and from sea to sea, and from mountain to

mountain.

13 $ Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because

of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings. Il Or, rule,

14 I || Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the midst of Carmel: let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.

15 According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I shew unto him marvellous things.

16 | The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might : they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf.

17 They shall lick the odust like a serpent, they shall *Or, creeping move out of their holes like * worms of the earth : they

shall be afraid of the LORD our God, and shall fear because
of thee.

18 Who is a God like unto thee, that P pardoneth ini-
quity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of
his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he
delighteth in mercy.

19 He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

20 Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy
to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from
the days of old.

2 KINGS XVIII. VER. 7, 8.
7 And the LORD was with him; and he prospered whi-
thersoever he went forth : and he rebelled against the king

of Assyria, and served him not. + Heb. Azzah

8 He smote the Philistines, even unto + Gaza, and the borders thereof, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.

o Ps. lxxii. a

things.

Ex. xxxiv.

Isaiah's Prophecy of the Restoration of the ten Tribes, the
Punishment of Egypt, and the Conversion of Egypt and
Assyria.

ISAIAH XVIII 39.

1 God in care of his people will destroy the Ethiopians. 7 An access thereby

shall grow unto the church. 1 Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is be- A.C. 721. yond the rivers of Ethiopia :

* The eighteenth chapter of Isaiah is generally acknowledged to be the most
obscure of all his prophecies. The subject of it, the end and design of it, the
people to whom it is addressed, the person who sends the messengers, and the
nation to whom they are sent, are in Bishop Lowth's opinion, all obscure and
doubtful

. But Lowth unites with Vitringa in supposing the chapter to refer to
Sennacherib, and Houbigant applies it to that king, and Tirhaka; the swift
messengers representing the messengers sent by Tirhaka to the Jews, to inform
them that he was upon the march against their enemy Sennacherib. Dr. Wells's
paraphrase of this chapter is by no means satisfactory. Most interpreters have
supposed that this prophecy referred to Egypt, and that it denounced a great
Hoe, or judgment; consequently such interpretations have been adopted as
suited this pre-conceived opinion, without any grammatical examination of the
wards in which it was delivered. This opinion has been generally founded
fron the description of the geographical site of the countries“ beyond the rivers
of Ethiopia," and from this very description Bishop Horsley supposes that it
cannot possibly mean Egypt, p. 127, 128. After having ably discussed the dif-
ferent opinions on this difficult prophecy, he concludes that it relates entirely to
the restoration of the Jews, and to the ultimate destruction of Anti-christ, who
will be the instrument of those judgments by which the Church will be purified,
and that it contains an account of that people, who, under the hand of Provi-
dence

, will be engaged in the great work of the re-establishment of the Jews
in the holy land. The time present in prophetic vision, is not the time of deli-
tery, but the time of accomplishment. If, therefore, the prophecy is not yet
fulfilled, the application of it to Egypt must be erroneous, for that people have
long since ceased to be of any consideration. While the people of the Jews have
been from the very beginning, and are to this day, terrible, or awfully remark-
able, (as the word x 11 may be here translated,) and, on account of God's
plagues, have made all other nations afraid of the like; as God had threatened.
The particle 17, rendered “ woe to,” in ver. 1. may be used as an exclamation
of surprise, and very often it is compellative of persons at a distance, and it is so
taken bere by Calvin, Castaliomthe great Bible—the Bishops' Bible—and the
English Geneva Bible. “Shadowing of wings” may be intended to characterise
some great people, and is an usual image in prophetic language for describing
protection afforded by the strong to the weak. The expressions, a “nation
raeted out, and trodden down," are particularly descriptive of the present state
of the Jews, who are, even at this day, every where trampled under foot, held

A. C.721.

2 That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye

swift messenin subjection, and treated with contempt and derision; and this is likely still to be their condition, till their conversion shall take place. The inundation of rivers is a frequent image, in the prophetic style, of the ravages of armies of foreign invaders, and it is here used to represent the devastation committed by the enemies of Judah. Ver. 3. calls on the whole world to witness a display of God's power and providence, which alludes to a renewed preaching of the Gospel in the latter ages. I will “ take my rest," in ver. 4. seems to imply a long suspension of the visible interpositions of Providence in the affairs of this world, and in favour of his people, under an image of the extreme stillness of the atmosphere in summer. “ The season of the harvest," and “the gathering of fruit,” is the prophetic image of that period, when our Lord will send forth his angels to gather his elect from the four winds of heaven. The awful predictions against insincere and nominal members of the Church, and their separation from it by God's judgments, are illustrated by the cutting off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and the cutting down of the branches; and this is to take place before that great event. It was a prevailing opinion in the primitive ages, that Antichrist's last exploit would be to fix his seat of empire at Jerusalem, where he would ultimately perish. The pronoun translated "them," (“summer upon them," “ winter upon them,") in the original is singular, and ought to be rendered "it," as the true antecedent of this pronoun is the word •2732, “ my dwelling place," ver. 4. which dwelling place may be understood literally of Mount Sion. “ In that time,” ver. 7. that is, immediately after this purgation of the Church, at the very time when the fowls of the mountains, with all the beasts of the earth, when Anti-christ with his rebel rout shall have fixed his seat between the seas, in the holy mountain-a present shall be brought; the nation described in ver. 2. shall be brought to the place of the name of the name of the Lord of Hosts, the Mount Zion. Persuaded as I am that prophecies were generally given reference to some great passing event, I have endeavoured to connect this with the taking of Samaria, and the captivity of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser. It seems impossible that Isaiah would have permited this remarkable, and, to the Jews, most interesting event, to pass unnoticed. I suppose, therefore, that he broke out into this prediction of the restoration of the Jews, at the time when the people of Judah witnessed the destruction of their apostate brethren ; and, perhaps, from their signal punishment, apprehended for themselves a similar fate. To the remarks above, taken from Bishop Horsley, I shall only add his translation, with noies, on this prophecy; referring the reader to the book itself.—Horsley's Biblical Criticisms, vol. ii. p. 107– 178. 1 Ho! Land spreading wide the shadow of (thy) wings, which art beyond

the rivers of Cusht.

That is, affording aid and protection to friends and allies in remote countries.

+ The land of Cush in holy writ (commonly, but by mistake, rendered Ethiopia) is properly that district of Arabia where the sons of Cush first settled. But as this race multiplied exceedingly, and spread, not only into other parts of Arabia, but eastward, round the head of the Persian Gulf, to the confines of

gers, to a nation * scattered and peeled, to a people terrible A.C. 72).
from their beginning hitherto ; + & a nation meted out and
trodden down, & whose land the rivers have spoiled !

* Or, out. spread and polished + Or, a nation that meteth out, and treadeth down.

Heb, a nation of line, line, and treading under foot.

Or, whose land the rivers despise.

2 Accustomed to send messengers by sea,

Even in bulrush-vessels t, upon the surface of the waters,
Go, swift messengers 1,
Unto a nation $ dragged away and plucked,
Unto a people wonderful from their beginning hitherto,
A nation, expecting, expecting, and trampled under foot,

Whose land rivers have spoiled.
3 All the inhabitants of the world and dwellers upon earth

Shall see the lifting up, as it were, of a banne" || upon the mountains,
And shall hear the sounding as it were of a trumpet 11.
4 For thus saith Jehovah unto me:

I will sit still I (but I will keep my eye upon my prepared habitation)

Susiana; and westward, across the Arabian Gulf, into the region since called
Abyssinia, which extended along the coast from Ptolemais to Arsinoë, and in-
land to the very sources of the Nile : the land of Cush is often taken more
largely for a great tract of country, not only comprehending the whole of Arabia
Felix, but having for its eastern boundary the branch of the Tigris, below the
town of Asia, and for its western boundary the Nile. The rivers of Cush, in
this place, may be either the Euphrates and the Tigris on the east, or the Nile,
the Astaboras, and the Astapus, on the west. But which of these are meant,
it must be left for time to shew.

• " Accustomed to send”—The form of the expression in the original signi-
fies, not a single act of sending once, but the habit of sending perpetually.

+ " Sending by sea, in bulrush-vessels,” is a figurative expression, descrip-
tire of skill in navigation, and of the safety and expedition with which the in-
habitants of the land called to are supposed to perform distant voyages.

"Go, swift messengers"— You who, by your skill in navigation and your extensive commerce and alliances, are so well qualified to be carriers of a message to people in the remotest corners, Go with God's message.

"Unto a nation," &c. viz. to the dispersed Jews; a nation dragged away from its proper seat, and plucked of its wealth and power; people wonderful, from the beginning to this very time, for the special providence which ever has attended them, and directed their fortunes; a nation still lingering in expectation of the Messiah, who so long since came, and was rejected by them, and now is coming again in glory; a nation universally trampled under foot ; whose land, “rivers,' armies of foreign invaders, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Syromacedonians, Romans, Saracens, and Turks, have over-run and depopu

lated.

“A banner-a trumpet.” The banner of the cross, to be lifted up more conspicuously than ever before; the trumpet of the Gospel, to be sounded more Joudly than ever before in the latter ages.

1 This 4th verse represents a long cessation of visible interpositions of Providence, under the image of God's sitting still ; the stillness of that awful panse, under the image of that torpid state of the atmosphere in hot weather,