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As the parching heat just before lightning,
As the dewy cloud in the heat of harvest.

5 For afore the harvest," when the bud is coming to perfection,

-And the blossom is become a juicy berry,

curls upon the sleeping surface of the waters; the black ponderous cloud covering the whole sky seems to hang fixed and motionless as an arch of stone, Nature seems benumbed in all her operations. The vigilance nevertheless of God's silent providence is represented under the image of his keeping his eye while he thus sits still upon his prepared habitation. The sudden eruption of judgment. threatened in the next verse, after this total cessation, just before the final call to Jew and Gentile, answers to the storms of thunder and lightning which, in the suffocating heats of the latter end of summer, succeed that perfect stillness and stagnation of the atmosphere. And as the natural thunder at such seasons is the welcome harbinger of refreshing and copious showers, so it appears the thunder of God's judgments will usher in the long desired season of the consummation of mercy. So accurate is the allusión in all its parts.

9 The harvest is the constant image of that season when God shall gather his elect from the four winds of heaven, reap the field of the world, gather his wheat into his barns, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Images, which relate not to the

He will cut off the useless shoots with pruning hooks,

And the bill shall take away the luxuriant branches. 1o

6 They shall be left together to the bird of prey of the mountains,

And to the beasts of the earth.

11

And upon it11 shall the bird of prey summer,

And all beasts of the earth upon it shall winter.

1

7 At that season a present shall be led 1o

To Jehovah of hosts,

A people dragged away and plucked;

translation of the just to heaven, and the burning of the wicked in hell, but to the placing of the faithful in a state of peace and security on earth, and to the excision of the incorrigible of the irreligious faction.

10 God in the later ages will purify his church with sore but wholesome judgments. Compare John xv, 1, 2.

11 It was a prevailing opinion among the early fathers, that Antichrist is to possess himself of the Holy Land, and that there he is to perish.

12 Compare Isaiah Ixvi, 20, and Zeph. iii, 9, 10.

VOL. II.

M

Even of a people wonderful from their beginning hitherto,

A nation expecting, expecting, and trampled un

der foot,

Whose land rivers have spoiled,

Unto the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts,
Mount Sion.

I must yet add a few words, to obviate a difficulty which may seem to press with some weight upon the interpretation I have now given of this chapter. How, it may be asked, is this prophecy in any sense which applies it to the final restoration of the Jews connected with what precedes and follows it in the context of the prophet? The burthen of Damascus precedes, the burthen of Egypt follows. The subversion of the kingdom of the Syrians of Damascus by the Assyrian; the detail of the judgments which are to fall upon Egypt in various periods of her history from the time of the prophet downwards; With what coherence is the final restoration of the Jews brought in between?

I answer, this prophecy is indeed a sort of episode interrupting the regular order of the discourse, and yet not unnaturally introduced.

The burthen of Damascus opened at the beginning of the seventeenth chapter, naturally brings the prophet to speak of the subversion of the kingdom of Israel, in those days in alliance with the Syrians, and to be overthrown by the same enemy at the same time. The prediction of the subversion of the kingdom of Israel leads the prophet to warn the Jewish people in general of the judgments that await them, with manifest allusion in the 11th verse, as Casaubon has observed, to the final dispersion of the nation by the Romans. And the allusion to this final dispersion leads, as it almost always does, to a prediction of the final restoration. This is delivered generally in the 12th, 13th, and 14th verses of chap. xvii. The prophet by a sudden exclamation of surprize (ill rendered "Wo to"), gives notice that a new scene suddenly breaks upon him. He sees the armies of Antichrist rushing on in the full tide of conquest, and pouring like a deluge over the land of God's people (verse 12). He no sooner sees them, than he declares that "God shall rebuke them," that they shall flee with precipitation and in dismay, and "shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and as a rolling thing before the whirlwind," (verse 13). Elated with this

glorious scene of the total rout of the apostate confederacy, he addresses his countrymen in words of exultation and triumph: "This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us," (verse 14). Having thus in general terms predicted the final success and happiness of his nation, he proceeds in the eighteenth chapter, to the description of visions more particularly declarative of the manner and of the time of their deliverance, which nevertheless leave much unexplained. In what people of the earth, of the eastern or the western world, the characters of the messenger-people may be found, when the time shall come for the accomplishment of the prophecy is hitherto uncertain in that degree, that we are hardly at liberty in my judgment to conjecture. The messenger-people is certainly to be a Christian people; for I think, it cannot be doubted that the messenger-people and the leaders of the present to Jehovah to Mount Sion are the same people; and the act of leading a present to Jehovah to Mount Sion must be an act of worshippers of Jehovah, for it is an act of worship. They therefore who lead the present will be true worshippers, performing that service from religious motives; and as such they are most expressly de

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