13 Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, 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. xxviii. 38, 15 Thou shalt & sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt & Deut tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; Hag. i. 6. and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine. 16 ¶ For the statutes of "Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a † desolation, and the inhabitants thereof an hissing: therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people. MICAH VII. 1 The church, complaining of her small number, 3 and the general corruption, 5 putteth her confidence not in man, but in God. 8 She triumpheth over her enemies. 14 God comforteth her by promises, 16 by confusion of the enemies, 18 and by his mercies. O, he doth much keep the, &c. 25, 26. i 1 Kings xvi. 30, &c. +Or, astonishment. gatherings of 1 Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the Heb, the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there summer. is no cluster to eat my soul desired the firstripe fruit. 2 The good man is perished out of the earth: and k there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. Ps. xii. 1. Is. lvii. 1. or, merciful. 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 || his mischievous desire: so they Heb. the 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. 1 mischief of his soul. 35, 36. Luke 6 For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter ! Matt. x. 21, riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against xii. 53. her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. 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 light unto me. 9 I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have 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. * Or, And thou wilt see her that is mine enemy, and cover her with shame. m Ps. lxxix. 10. & cxv. 2. shall be for a n Amos ix. Or, even to. 11, &c. Or, after that it hath been. || Or, rule. o Ps. Ixxii. 9. 10 * Then she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her which said unto me, m Where is the LORD thy God? mine eyes shall behold her: now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets. 11 In the day that thy" walls are to be built, in that day shall the decree be far removed. 12 In that day also he shall come even to thee from Assyria, and from the fortified cities, and from the fortress 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. 14 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 dust 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. things. p Ex. xxxiv. 7. + Heb. Azzah. 18 Who is a God like unto thee, that P pardoneth iniquity, 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 whithersoever he went forth and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not. 8 He smote the Philistines, even unto † Gaza, and the borders thereof, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. SECTION IV. Isaiah's Prophecy of the Restoration of the ten Tribes, the 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 woe, or judgment; consequently such interpretations have been adopted as suited this pre-conceived opinion, without any grammatical examination of the words in which it was delivered. This opinion has been generally founded from 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 different 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 Providence, 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 delivery, 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 remarkable, (as the word 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 here by Calvin, Castalio-the 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 meted 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 the waters, saying, Go, swift messen upon ye in 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 "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 in 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 notes, on this prophecy; referring the reader to the book itself.-Horsley's Biblical Criticisms, vol. ii. p. 107— 178. ,מכובר 1 Ho! Land spreading wide the shadow of (thy) wings, which art beyond the rivers of Cush +. 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.721. from their beginning hitherto; +ta nation meted out and trodden down, § whose land the rivers have spoiled! 2 Accustomed to send messengers by sea, Even in bulrush-vessels †, upon the surface of the waters, Go, swift messengers, Unto a nation § dragged away and plucked, Unto a people wonderful from their beginning hitherto, A nation, expecting, expecting, and trampled under foot, 3 All the inhabitants of the world and dwellers upon earth Shall see the lifting up, as it were, of a banner || upon the mountains, And shall hear the sounding as it were of a trumpet ||. 4 For thus saith Jehovah unto me: I will sit still¶(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 inland 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 signifies, not a single act of sending once, but the habit of sending perpetually. ↑ "Sending by sea, in bulrush-vessels," is a figurative expression, descriptive of skill in navigation, and of the safety and expedition with which the inhabitants 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; a 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 loudly than ever before in the latter ages. 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 pause, under the image of that torpid state of the atmosphere in hot weather, * Or, outspread 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 ri vers despise. |