harmony through One Spirit?" "We come together," says Tertullian' of Christian worship, "in a meeting and congregation as before God, as though we would in one body sue Him by our prayers. This violence is pleasing to God."

16. Sanctify the congregation. "Do what in you lies, by monishing, exhorting, threatening, giving the example of a holy life, that the whole people present itself holy before its God," "“3 lest your prayers be hindered, and a little leaven corrupt the whole lump."

Assemble the elders. 664 4 The judgment concerned all; all then were to join in seeking mercy from God. None were on any pretence to be exempted; not the oldest, whose strength was decayed, or the youngest, who might seem not yet of strength." The old also are commonly freer from sin and more given to prayer.

So

Gather the children. "He Who feedeth the young ravens when they cry, will not neglect the cry of poor children. He assigns as a reason, why it were fitting to spare Nineveh, the six-score thousand persons that could not discern between their right hand and their left." The sight of them who were involved in their parents' punishment could not but move the parents to greater earnestness. when Moab and Ammon, a great multitude, came against Jehoshaphat, he proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah, and Judah gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord; even out of all the cities of Judah, they came to seek the Lord. And all Judah was standing before the Lord, their little ones also, their wives, and their children. So it is described in the book of Judith, how "with great vehemency did they humble their souls, both they and their wives and their children-and every man and woman and the little children-fell before the temple, and cast ashes upon their heads and spread out their sackcloth before the Face of the Lord."

Let the bridegroom go forth. He says not even, the married, or the newly married, he who had taken a new wife, but he uses the special terms of the marriage-day, bridegroom

1 Apol. c. 39. p. 80. Oxf. Tr.
4 Poc.
5 Jon. iv. 11.
Tiv. 9-11.

8 Deut. xxiv. 5.

Lap.

3 S. Jer. 62 Chr. xx. 1-4, 13. Is. xxii. 12-14.

and bride. The new-married man was, during a year, exempted from going out to war, or from any duties which might press upon him. But nothing was to free from this common affliction of sorrow. Even the just newly married, although it were the very day of the bridal, were to leave the marriage-chamber and join in the common austerity of repentance. It was mockery of God to spend in delights time consecrated by Him to sorrow. He says, In that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth. And behold joy and gladness-surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord God of Hosts. Whence, in times of fasting or prayer, the Apostle suggests the giving up of pure pleasures 1o, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer.

10

"He then who, by chastisement in food and by fasting and alms, says that he is doing acts of repentance, in vain doth he promise this in words, unless he go forth out of his chamber and fulfill a holy and pure fast by a chaste penitence."

The

17. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar. The porch in this, Solomon's temple, was in fact a tower, in front of the Holy of Holies, of the same breadth with the Temple, viz. 20 cubits, and its depth half its breadth, viz. 10 cubits ", and its height 120 cubits, the whole overlaid within with pure gold 12. The brazen altar for burnt offerings stood in front of it 13. altar was of brass, twenty cubits square; and so, equal in breadth to the Temple itself, and ten cubits high 14. The space then between the porch and the altar was inclosed on those two sides 15; it became an inner part of the court of the priests. Through it the priests or the high priest passed, whenever they went to sprinkle the blood, typifying the Atonement, before the veil of the tabernacle, or for any other office of the tabernacle. It seems to have been a place of prayer for the priests. It is spoken of as an aggravation of the sins of those 25 idolatrous priests, that here, where they ought to worship God, they turned

their backs toward the Temple of the Lord, to worship the sun'. Here, in the exercise of his office, Zechariah was standing2, when the Spirit of God came upon him and he rebuked the people and they stoned him. Here the priests, with their faces toward the Holy of Holies and the Temple which He had filled with His Glory, were to weep. Tears are a gift of God. In holier times, so did the priests weep at the Holy Eucharist in thought of the Passion and Precious Death of our Lord Jesus, which we then plead to God, that they bore with them, as part of their dress, linen wherewith to dry their tears 3.

And let them say. A form of prayer is provided for them. From this the words, spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, enter into the litanies of the Christian Church.

And give not thine heritage to reproach. The enmity of the heathen against the Jews was an enmity against God. God had avouched them as His people and His property, Their land was an heritage from God. God, in that He had separated them from the heathen, and revealed Himself to them, had made them His especial heritage. Moses, then Joshua, the Psalmists, plead with God, that His own power or will to save His people would be called in question, if he should destroy them, or give them up. God, on the other hand, tells them, that not for any deserts of theirs, but for His own Name's sake, He delivered them, lest the Heathen should be the more confirmed in their errors as to Himself, It is part of true penitence to plead to God to pardon us, not for anything in ourselves, (for we have nothing of our own but our sins) but because we are the work of His hands, created in His image, the price of the Blood of Jesus, called by His Name.

That the heathen should rule over them. This, and not the rendering in the margin, use a byword against them, is the uniform meaning of

1 Ezek. viii. 16.

22 Chr. xxiv. 20, 1. S. Matt. xxiii. 35.

3 Amalar, de Eccl. Off. iii. 22.

4 Ex. xxxii. 12. Num. xiv. 13-16. Deut. ix. 28, 9. 5 Josh. vii. 9. 6 Ps. lxxiv. lxxix. cxv. Ezek. xx. 5. xxxvi. 21-3.

8 See Introd. to Joel, p. 102.

? Ps. xlii. 3, 10; add Ps. lxxix. 10. cxv. 2. Mic. vii. 16.

the Hebrew phrase. It is not to be supposed that the Prophet Joel would use it in a sense contrary to the uniform usage of all the writers before him. Nor is there any instance of any other usage of the idiom in any later writer. "The enigma which was closed," says St. Jerome, "is now opened. For who that people is, manifold and strong, described above under the name of the palmerworm, the locust, the canker-worm and the catterpillar, is now explained more clearly, lest the heathen rule over them. For the heritage of the Lord is given to reproach, when they serve their enemies, and the nations say, Where is their God, Whom they boasted to be their Sovereign and their Protector?" Such is the reproach ever made against God's people, when He does not visibly protect them, which the Psalmist says was as a sword in his bones; his tears were his meat day and night while they said it. The Chief

priests and scribes and elders fulfilled a prophecy by venturing so to blaspheme our Lord 10, He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him.

18. Then will the Lord be jealous for Hisland. Upon repentance, all is changed. Before, God seemed set upon their destruction. It was His great army which was ready to destroy them; He was at its head, giving the word. Now He is full of tender love for them, which resents injury done to them, as done to Himself. The word might more strictly perhaps be rendered, And the Lord is jealous. He would shew how instantaneous the mercy and love of God for His people is, restrained while they are impenitent, flowing forth upon the first tokens of repentance. The word, jealous for, when used of God, jealous for My holy Name 12, jealous for Jerusalem 13, is used, when God resents evil which had been actually inflicted.

19. I will send you corn, &c. This is the beginning of the reversal of the threatened judgments. It is clear from this, and still

more from what follows, that the chastisements actually came, so that the repentance described, was the consequence, not of the exhortations to repentance, but of the chastisement. What was removed was the chastisement which had burst upon them, not when it was ready to burst. What was given, was what before had been taken away. So it ever was with the Jews; so it is mostly with the portions of the Christian Church or with individuals now. Seldom do they take warning of coming woe; when it has begun to burst, or has burst, then they repent and God gives them back upon repentance what He had withdrawn or a portion of it. So the Prophet seems here to exhibit to us a law and a course of God's judgments and mercies upon man's sin. He takes away both temporal and spiritual blessings symbolized here by the corn and wine and oil; upon repentance He restores them. "Over and against the wasting of the land, he sets its richness; against hunger, fullness; against reproach, unperiled glory; against the cruelty and incursion of enemies, their destruction and putrefaction; against barrenness of fruits and aridity of trees, their fresh shoots and richness; against the hunger of the word and thirst for doctrine, he brings in the fountain of life, and the Teacher of righteousness; against sadness, joy; against confusion, solace; against reproaches, glory; against death, life; against ashes, a crown.' "O fruitful and manly penitence! O noble maiden, most faithful intercessor for sins!

A

plank after shipwreck! Refuge of the poor, help of the miserable, hope of exiles, cherisher of the weak, light of the blind, solace of the fatherless, scourge of the petulant, axe of vices, garner of virtues. Thou who alone bindest the Judge, pleadest with the Creator, conquerest the Almighty. While overcome, thou overcomest; while tortured, thou torturest; while wounding, thou healest; while healthfully succumbing, thou triumphest gloriously. Thou alone, while others keep silence, mountest boldly the throne of grace. David thou leadest by the hand and reconcilest; Peter thou restorest; Paul thou enlightenest; the Publican, taken from the receipt of custom, thou boldly insertest in the choir of the Apostles; Mary, from a harlot, thou bearest aloft and joinest to Christ; the robber nailed to the cross, yet fresh from blood, thou introducest into Paradise. What

And I will no more make you a reproach. All the promises of God are conditional. They presuppose man's faithfulness. God's pardon is complete. He will not, He says, for these offences, or for any like offences, give them over to the heathen. So after the Captivity He no more made them a reproach unto the heathen, until they finally apostatized, and leaving their Redeemer, owned no king but Cæsar. They first gave themselves up; they chose Cæsar rather than Christ, and to be servants of Cæsar, rather than that He should not be crucified; and so God left them in his hands, whom they had chosen.

20. And I will remove far off from you the northern army. God speaks of the human agent under the figure of the locusts, which perish in the sea; yet so as to shew at once, that He did not intend the locust itself, nor to describe the mode in which He should overthrow the human oppressor. He is not speaking of the locust itself, for the Northern is no name for the locust which infested Palestine, since it came from the South; nor would the destruction of the locust be in two opposite seas, since they are uniformly driven by the wind into the sea, upon whose waves they alight and perish, but the wind would not carry them into two opposite seas; nor would the locust perish in a barren and desolate land, but would fly further; nor would it be said of the locust that he was destroyed, Because he had done great things 2. But He represents to us, how this enemy should be driven quite out of the bounds of His people, so that he should not vex them more, but perish. The imagery is from the Holy Land. The East sea is the Dead Sea, once the fertile vale of Siddim 3, "4in which sea were formerly Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, until God overthrew them." This, in the Pentateuch, is called the salt sea 5, or the sea of the plain, or desert, explained in Deuteronomy and Joshua to be the salt sea; Ezekiel calls it the East sea, and in Numbers it is said of it, your south border shall be the salt sea eastward. The utmost, or rather, the hinder sea 10 (i. e. that which is behind one who is looking toward the East whose Hebrew name is from " fronting " you) is the Mediterranean, "on whose shores are Gaza and Ascalon, Azotus and Joppa and Cæsarea." The land barren and desolate, lying

Deut. iii. 17. iv. 49. Josh. iii. 16. xii. 3. xv. 25. xviii. 19, also in 2 Kings xiv. 25. 7 Deut. iii. Josh. iii. xii. 8 xlvii. 18.

11

9 xxxiv. 3. 10 Deut. xi. 24. xxxiv. 2. 7p.

Before CHRIST

cir. 800.

Deut. 11. 24.

y toward the utmost sea,

and his stink shall come up,

between, is the desert of Arabia, the southern boundary of the Holy Land. The picture then seems to be, that the Northern foes filled the whole of Judæa, in numbers like the locust, and that God drove them violently forth, all along the bounds of the Holy Land, into the desert, the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean. S. Jerome relates a mercy of God in his own time which illustrates the image; but he writes so much in the language of Holy Scripture, that perhaps he only means that the locusts were driven into the sea, not into both seas. "In our times too we have seen hosts of locusts cover Judæa, which afterward, by the mercy of the Lord, when the priests and people, between the porch and the altar, i. e. between the place of the Cross and the Resurrection prayed the Lord and said, spare Thy people, a wind arising, were carried headlong into the Eastern sea, and the utmost sea." Alvarez relates how, priests and people joining in litanies to God, He delivered them from an exceeding plague of locusts, which covered 24 English miles, as He delivered Egypt of old at the prayer of Moses. "When we knew of this plague being so near, most of the Clerks of the place came to me, that I should tell them some remedy against it. I answered them, that I knew of no remedy except to commend themselves to Gol, and to pray Him to drive the plague out of the land. I went to the Embassador and told him that to me it seemed good that we should make a procession with the people of the land and that it might please our Lord God to hear us; it seemed good to the Embassador; and, in the morning of the next day, we collected the people of the place and all the Clergy; and we took our Altar-stone, and those of the place theirs, and our Cross and theirs, singing our litany, we went forth from the Church, all the Portuguese and the greater part of the people of the place. I said to them that they should not keep silence, but should, as we, cry aloud saying in their tongue Zio marinos, i. e. in our's, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. And with this cry and litany, we through an open wheat-country for the space of one third of a league.-It pleased our Lord to hear the sinners, and while we were turning to the place, because their [the locusts'] road was toward the sea whence they had come, there were so many after us, that it seemed no otherwise than that they sought to break our ribs and heads with blows of 3 Ib. xxxvii. 36.

2 Is. xvii. 14.

went

1 c. 32. 4 de Civ. Dei. iii. 71. fin. He is referring, doubtless, to Julius Obsequens, a heathen writer, (de

come up, because he hath done great things.

Before CHRIST cir. 800.

† Heb. he hath magnified to do.

stones, such were the blows they dealt us. At this time a great thunderstorm arose from toward the sea, which came in their face with rain and hail, which lasted three good hours; the river and brooks filled greatly; and when they had ceased to drive, it was matter of amazement, that the dead locusts on the bank of the great river measured two cubits high; and so for the rivulets, there was a great multitude of dead on their banks. On the next day in the morning there was not in the whole land even one live locust."

And his stink shall come up. The image is still from the locust. It, being such a fearful scourge of God, every individual full of activity and life repeated countlessly in the innumerable host, is, at God's will and in His time, cast by His word into the sea, and when thrown up by the waves on the shore, becomes in a few hours one undistinguishable, putrefying, heaving mass. Such does human malice and ambition and pride become, as soon as God casts aside the sinful instrument of His chastisement. Just now, a world to conquer could not satisfy it; superior to man, independent, it deems, of God. He takes away its breath, it is a putrid carcase. Such was Sennacherib's army; in the evening inspiring terror; before the morning, he is not. They were all dead corpses3.

The likeness stops here. For the punishment is at an end. The wicked and the persecutors of God's people are cut off, the severance has taken place. On the one side, there is the putrefying mass; on the other, the jubilee of thanksgiving. The gulf is fixed between them. The offensive smell of the corruption ascends; as Isaiah closes his prophecy, the carcases of the wicked, the perpetual prey of the worm and the fire, shall be an abhorring to all flesh. The righteous behold it, but it reaches them not, to hurt them. In actual life, the putrid exhalations at times have, among those on the sea-shore, produced a pestilence, a second visitation of God, more destructive than the first. This, however, has been but seldom. Yet what must have been the mass of decay of creatures so slight, which could produce a wide-wasting pestilence! What an image of the numbers of those who perish, and of the fetidness of sin ! S. Augustine, in answer to the heathen who imputed all the calamities of the later Roman Empire to the displeasure of the gods, because the world had become Christian, says, "They themselves have recorded that the prodig. c. xc.) "Immense armies of locusts in Africa, which, cast by the wind into the sea, and thrown up by the waves, through the intolerable

multitude of locusts was, even in Africa, a sort of prodigy, while it was a Roman province. They say that, after the locusts had consumed the fruits and leaves of trees, they were cast into the sea, in a vast incalculable cloud, which having died and being cast back on the shores, and the air being infected thereby, such a pestilence arose, that in the realm of Masinissa alone 800,000 men perished, and many more in the lands on the coasts. Then at Utica, out of 30,000 men in the prime of life who were there, they assert that 10 only remained." S. Jerome says of the locusts of Palestine1; when the shores of both seas were filled with heaps of dead locusts which the waters had cast up, their stench and putrefaction was so noxious as to corrupt the air, so that a pestilence was produced among both beasts and men." Modern writers say 2, "The locusts not only produce a famine, but in districts near the sea where they had been drowned, they have occasioned a pestilence from the putrid effluvia of the immense numbers blown upon the coast or thrown up by the tides." "We observed, in May and June, a number of these insects coming from the S. directing their course to the Northern shore; they darken the sky like a thick cloud, but scarcely have they quitted the shore before they who, a moment before, ravaged and ruined the country, cover the surface of the sea with their dead bodies, to the great distress of the Franks near the harbor, on account of the stench from such a number of dead insects, driven by the winds close to the very houses." "4 All the full-grown insects were driven into the sea by a tempestuous N. W. wind, and were afterward cast upon the beach, where, it is said, they formed a bank of 3 or 4 feet high, extending—a distance of near 50 English miles. It is asserted that when this mass became putrid and the wind was S. E. the stench was sensibly felt in several parts of Sneuwberg. The column passed the houses of two of our party, who asserted that it continued without any interruption for more than a month." "5 The South and East winds drive the clouds of locusts with violence into the Mediterranean,

smell produced a grievous pestilence to the cattle; and of man it is related that 800,000 perished through this plague." Orosius says, "In Numidia, 800,000 perished; on the sea coast, especially that near Carthage and Utica, it is said that more than 200,000 perished. In Utica itself, 30,000 soldiers, placed as a guard for all Africa, were destroyed. At Utica in one day, at one gate, more than 1500 of their corpses were carried out." (v. 11.)

1 ad. loc. 2 Forbes, ii. 373. Hasselquist, p. 445. 4 Barrow, S. Afr. p. 239. 5 Volney, i. 278. ii. 21. Ps. cxxvi. 2, 3. 1 Sam. xii. 24.

and drown them in such quantities that when their dead are cast on the shore, they infect the air to a great distance." Wonderful image of the instantaneous, ease, completeness, of the destruction of God's enemies; a mass of active life exchanged, in a moment, into a mass of death.

Because he hath done great things; lit. (as in the E. M.) because he hath magnified to do, i. e. as used of man, hath done proudly. To do greatly, or to magnify Himself, when used of God, is to display His essential greatness, in goodness to His people, or in vengeance on their enemies. Man's great deeds are mostly deeds of great ambition, great violence, great pride, great iniquity; and so of him, the words he magnified himself, he did greatly, mean, he did ambitiously, proudly, and so offended God. In like way great doings, when used of God, are His great works of good 10; of man, his great works of evil 11. "12 Man has great deserts, but evil." To speak great things 13, is to speak proud things greatness of heart 14 is pride of 14 heart. He is speaking then of man who was God's instrument in chastening His people; since of irrational, irresponsible creatures, a term which involves moral fault, would not have been used, nor would a moral fault have been set down as the ground why God destroyed them. The destruction of Sennacherib or Holofernes have been assigned as the fulfillment of this prophecy. They were part of its fulfillment, and of the great law of God which it declares, that instruments, which He employs, and who exceed or accomplish for their own ends, the office which He assigns them, He casts away and destroys.

21. Fear not, O land. Before, they were bidden to tremble 15, now they are bidden, fear not; before, to turn in weeping, fasting and mourning; now, to bound for joy and rejoice; before, the land mourned; now, the land is bidden to rejoice. The enemy had done great things; now the cause of joy is that God had done great things; the Almightiness of God overwhelming and sweeping over the might put forth to destroy. It is better rendered, the Lord hath

10

7 Ezek. xxxviii. 23. 8 Is. x. 15. Dan. xi. 36, 37. Lam. i. 9. Zeph. ii. 8. Dan. viii. 4, 8, 11, 25.

Ps. ix. 12. lxxvii. 13. lxxviii. 11. ciii. 7.

Is. xii. 4; Ps. lxxvii. 12. lxxviii. 7. Ps. cxli. 4. 1 Sam. ii. 3. Ezek. xiv. 22. 23. xx. 43. xxi. 29. Zeph. iii. 11; y Jer. iv. 18. xi. 18. xxi. 14, see Hos. xii. 2.