their walk; they shall make haste to the wall thereof, and A.C. 720. the defence shall be prepared. *Heb. cover 6 The gates of the river shall be opened, and the palace ing, or, coshall be dissolved. verer. + Or, molten. which was es 7 And Huzzab shall be § led away captive, she shall be tor, that brought up, and her maids shall lead her as with the voice tablished, or, of doves, tabering upon their breasts. 8 But Nineveh is || of old like a pool of water: yet shall flee away. Stand, stand, shall they cry; but shall look back. 9 Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold: there is none end of the store and glory out of all the ‡ sant furniture. there was a stand made. Or, disco they vered. none days that she for plea 10 She is empty, and void, and waste: and the "heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness. 11 Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feedingplace of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion's whelp, and none made them afraid? 12 The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin. 13 Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions: and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard. || Or, from the hath been. * Or, cause them to turn. their infinite + Or, and store, &c. u xiii. 7, 8. NAHUM III. The miserable ruin of Nineveh. Χ 1 Woe to the § bloody city! it is all full of lies and Heb. the robbery; the prey departeth not; 2 The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and of the jumping chariots. and 3 The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses: 4 Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts. city of bloods. x Ezek. xxiv. 9. Hab. ii, 12. flame of the Heb. the sword and the lighting of the spear. 5 Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will y Is. xlvii. 3. shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. Ezek. xvi. 37. A. C. 720. * Or, nourishing. + Heb. No Amon. 6 And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock. 7 And it shall came to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste : who will bemoan her? whence shall I seek comforters for thee? 8 Art thou better than populous + No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea? 9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was inHeb. in thy finite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. help. z Jer. xxv. 17. eth himself. 10 42 Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. 11 Thou also shall be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy. 12 All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars. 14 Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds go into clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln. 15 There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. 16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars Or, spread of heaven: the cankerworm § spoileth, and fleeth away. 17 Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. 18 Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy || Or, valiant || nobles shall dwell in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them. ones. *Heb. wrinkling. * 19 There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually? : 42 This verse has been supposed to refer to the capture of Nineveh by Sennacherib, in which case the prophecy must be dated some years later; But Archbishop Newcome translates the verse in the future, and refers the prediction to the capture of Nineveh by Nebuchadnezzar. SECTION VI. Isaiah's Prophecy of the Desruction of Tyre. ISAIAH XXIII 43. 1 The miserable overthrow of Tyre. 17 Their unhappy return: 1 The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for A.C.715. it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them. * 2 Be* still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the Heb. silent. merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. 3 And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations. 4 Be thou ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring forth children, neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up virgins. 5 As at the report concerning Egypt, so shall they be sorely pained at the report of Tyre. 6 Pass ye over to Tarshish: howl, ye inhabitants of the isle. 7 Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? her own feet shall carry her + afar off to sojourn. 8 Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth? + Heb. from afar off. lute. 9 The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the Heb. to polpride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth. 10 Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more § strength. (Heb. girdle. ing a merchantman. * Heb. Ca 11 He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms: the LORD hath given a commandment || against Or, concernthe merchant city, to destroy the † strong holds thereof. 12 And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Chittim: there also shalt thou have no rest. After the captivity of the ten tribes, the city of Tyre was besieged by Shalmaneser. The siege continued five years, at the end of which time they were delivered by the death of this king. Success made them insolent, and drew upon them this prophecy of Isaiah, which foretells the miserable overthrow the Tyrians should hereafter receive from Nebuchadnezzar.-Prideaux's Connect. vol. i. p. 27.; see too Bishop Newton's account of the fulfilment of the prophecies against Tre. naan. +Or,strengths. A.C. 715. 13 Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin. 14 Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste. 15 And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one *Heb. it shall king: after the end of seventy years *shall Tyre sing as an as the song of harlot. be unto Tyre an harlot. + Heb. old. Or, Woe to the Assyrian. 16 Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. 17 ¶ And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. 18 And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the LORD it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for † durable clothing. SECTION VII. Prophecy of Isaiah on the Invasion of Palestine by the Assyrian ISAIAH X. VER. 5, TO THE END 4. 5¶OS Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, ||and the staff Heb. Asshur, in their hand is mine indignation. Or, though. 44 Bishop Horsley supposes that the prophecy beginning at Isaiah x. 5. was uttered on the occasion of Sennacherib's invasion. It is equally probable that it was spoken for the purpose of encouraging Hezekiah, when Sennacherib, immediately upon his father Shalmaneser's death, renewed the demand for the tributemoney which had been paid to him and to Tiglath-pileser by that king and Ahaz. When Hezekiah refused to comply with this demand, the king of Assyria declared war against Judah. Bishop Horsley supposes that the prophecy extends only to the thirty-second verse of this chapter; its immediate subject, he observes, is Sennacherib's invasion of Judea; but in speaking of the miraculous deliverance of the Jews from that calamity, the prophet's views are sometimes carried forward to the greater and more general deliverance of the elect of God. And in the end he passes from this subject of Sennacherib into an explicit prophecy of the final redemption, which is contained in the eleventh and twelfth chapters. The transition is so artificial, that the two last verses of this chapter may be considered either as the conclusion of this prophecy, or the beginning of the next. 6 I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. 7 Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. A. C. 715, Heb. to lay them a treading. a 2 Kings xviii. 24, 33, 8 a For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? 9 Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? &c. & xix. 10, is not Samaria as Damascus ? 10 As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria ; 11 Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? It is interesting to observe the beautiful manner in which the prophecy of our Saviour is introduced in the beginning of the eleventh chapter. At the conclusion of the tenth, the prophet had compared the enemies of God and his church, to the proud and lofty forests of Lebanon, the ruin of which is thus predicted, "He shall cut down the thickets of the forests with iron, and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down." Pursuing the metaphor, he represents, in the midst of the general storm, while the proud oaks of the forests are torn up by their roots, or lopped of their branches, the promised Deliverer, as a twig springing out of a tree cut down to the ground,—“ And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots." This mention of the stump of Jesse, shews that the royal house of Judah is considered as one of the trees thrown down by the hurricane, which is typical of Sennacherib's invasion, and proves the general extent of that prophetic commination. Chapters xiii. and xiv. to ver. 28, are added to this prophecy, as well on the authority of Lightfoot, as on account of their apparent connexion with it. The prophecy commences with a denunciation against Assyria, (ch. x. 5, &c.) It proceeds (ch. xi.) to describe the reign of the Messiah, and concludes with a song of praise for the anticipated blessings of that period. The prophet then, foreseeing the fate of Babylon, takes up the burden of its desolation. Isaiah, in prophetic vision, saw that Babylon would become the capital of Assyria (it being taken some few years after by Esarhaddon,) and would be the cause of that empire's aggrandizement and consequent fall; therefore, in denouncing vengeance against that city, he was in fact continuing his predictions against Assyria. Animated with this idea, he proceeds to describe the joy of the whole world upon the overthrow of the king of Babylon, when Lucifer, the son of the morning, shall fall from heaven (ch. xiv. 12.) The bold and emphatic language of chapter xiv. must be referred to the overthrow of that spiritual Babylon, Antichrist, of which pagan Babylon was but the type. The capture of Babylon referred to, took place by the Medes and Persians, under Cyrus, about a hun dred and seventy-six years after the prediction. At the time of the delivery of the prophecy, the Medes were an obscure people, without any apparent means of obtaining that power necessary to bring about its accomplishment. &c. |