scribed by the prophet Zephaniah, if I construe his

I take

transitive

to be the nominative of the verb ", and ♫ and to be accusatives

after it, in apposition. And I render the lines thus:

My worshippers, beyond the rivers of Cush,

Shall conduct, as an offering to me, the daughter of my dis

persion [i.e. my dispersed nation].

I have an unfashionable partiality for the opinions of antiquity. I think there is ground in the prophecies for the notion of the early fathers, that Palestine is the stage on which Antichrist in the height of his impiety will perish. I am much inclined too to assent to another opinion of the fathers, that a small band of the Jews will join Antichrist, and be active instruments of his persecutions; and I admit that it is not unlikely that this small part of the Jews will be settled in Jerusalem under the protection of Antichrist. But it is not to the settlement of this apostate band that the prophecy of this eighteenth chapter relates. For I must observe, that when the present offered consists of persons, the of

fered, as well as the offerers, must be worshippers. For to be offered is to be made a worshipper; or, in some instances, to be devoted to some particular service in which the general character of a worshipper is previously implied, both in the person who hath authority so to devote, and in the devoted; as in the instances of Jephtha's daughter, and the child Samuel. The people therefore brought as a present to Jehovah to Mount Sion (if Mount Sion is to be taken literally, as, not from this passage by itself, but by the collation of this passage with many others, I think it is) will be brought thither in a converted state. The great body of the Jewish people will be converted previous to their restoration; and being converted, will be assisted bv Christian nations of the uncircumcision in settling themselves in their antient seats. I am of opinion that some passages, in Zachariah in particular, make strongly for this notion of a previous settlement of worse than unconverted Jews. But I am not without hope, from the same passages, that the great body of the converted Jews returning will find those first settlers broken off from the Antichristian faction in a state of deep contrition, and ready to receive their brethren with open arms. So the whole

race shall be offered to Jehovah at Mount Sion, and not one of Israel shall be lost. And so far, but no farther, I can admit an inchoate restoration of the Jews antecedent to their conversion, and a settlement of a small body of them in the Holy Land by the Antichristian powers. But this, I repeat it, is not the great subject to which the prophecy relates, the general restoration of the Jewish people; a business in which the atheistical faction will have no share.

אבלע

CHAP. XIX.

Verse 3. "I will destroy the counsel thereof." "I will swallow up." The original word seems to express how all the schemes of man are absorbed, as it were, and lost in the general scheme of God's overruling providence.

Verse 6.—" and they shall turn the rivers far away." For, I would read, transposing the ; and I would punctuate the whole passage thus,

5 ונשתו מים מהים

ונהר יחרב ויבש ואזניחהו :

5 And the waters of the sea shall be exhausted [or absorbed],

And the river shall waste and become dry, and I will cause it

to stink.

6 The rivers are shrunk;

And the embanked canals shall be dried

up, &c.

Or perhaps the two first lines of this verse might be thus rendered, taking

literally:

And waters from the sea shall be drank,

For the river, &c.

The sense will be that by the river being dried up, men will be reduced to drink sea-water; and thus the LXX understood the passage.

Verse 7. "The paper reeds by the brooks"?"The meadow by the canal," Bishop Lowth I think, with Houbigant, that y is to be taken here in its natural sense of nakedness.

"Nakedness upon the river, upon the source of the river.” Nakedness is a very expressive image to describe the appearance of a river, when its bottom is exposed and bare, and its banks are divested of their ver dant clothing by long unseasonable drought. This interpretation has the authority of the Vulgate on its side: "Nudabitur alveus rivi"

"the source of the river." This is the only

passage in which the word is applied to a river or

stream of any kind. The Vulgate seems to have understood it as exactly equivalent to the Latin os, which properly denotes not what in the English language is meant by the mouth of a river, the place where it empties itself into the sea, which in Latin is properly expressed by ostium, but the source from whence a river takes its rise. For thus the Vulgate renders the whole clause; nudabitur alveus rivi

a fonte suo."

➡➡" shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.” The general sense of this clause I take to be well expressed in the version of the LXX: -α TV TO

και παν

σπειρόμενον δια του ποταμου ξηρανθήσεται ανεμοφθορον. The idea is, that all vegetation even close to the river's side shall be so perfectly withered, as to be scatter- · ed in the shape of powder by the wind.

Verse 9. "Moreover they that work in fine flax," &c. Interpreters differ greatly in the sense of the words, and none have given a satisfactory exposition. The word "p is rendered by the LXX in Gen. xlix, 11, as if it peculiarly signified the tendrils of the vine; and from its affinity in sound to the words T and , it is not unreasonable to suppose that it may signify any thing pliant, and apt to twist and twine. Hence it may signify