expounded without reference to Belshazzar's feast. "The sweet season that I longed for of the morning sleep, he (i. e. God) hath changed into horror by the scene of misery represented to my imagination."

Verse 5. "Prepare the table," &c. This 5th verse describes the revelling in Babylon the night that the town was taken. The prophet in his trance is present upon the spot; he has the whole scene before him, the feast, and the sudden irruption of the enemy. The suddenness of the thing is wonderfully expressed by the sudden turn of the discourse from the description of the royal banquet, to an alarm addressed by the prophet to the Babylonian chiefs. The idiom of the original may be imitated in the Latin language, but cannot be preserved in ours. Ornare mensam; ponere custodias; edere; potare; surgite principes; ungite scuta.' That these last words are an alarm to the Babylonians, not a call to the enemy, may be presumed, I think, from the mention of the shield only, the defensive wea pon.

Verse 6." Go, set a watchman" It appears from the 10th verse that the prophet himself was the watchman; therefore I cannot think that this

passage is rightly rendered as a command to the prophet to set a watchman.

Verse 7." a chariot with a couple of horsemen;" literally, as I think, "one riding a pair of postilions." Dis so often joined with chariots in the Old Testament, that I am apt to think that the military cars of the east, with which the Jews were acquainted, in the earliest times were not of the form which was afterwards in use among the Greeks and the people of Asia Minor, (who certainly used cars driven by a charioteer seated on a box, or in the car). I imagine that these more antient cars were driven by men riding on the beasts that drew them; and that is a phrase for such a car.*

The

passage may be rendered more literally in Latin than in English. • Videt [quendam] vectum binis equitibus; vectum asino, vectum camelo.' The last clause affirms that the car was drawn by a pair of different beasts.t

* Whether such cars were ever actually in use or no, which, upon further consideration, seems very improbable, such evidently was the car of the prophetic vision.

-al עמו פרשים Some commentators have imagined that the +

ludes only to the order in which Cyrus's cavalry advanced to

Verse 8." a lion." "Leo, quod brevissimas habet palpebras, unde etiam dormiens vigilare videtur, symbolum est vigilantis excubitoris; soletque adpingi valvis templorum et palatiorum, quasi vigil et custos loci," inquit Horus Apollo. Tirinus apud Poole.

A comma should certainly be placed after the first

,ויקרא which, with the preceding words after אנוכי

makes a distinct clause, in which the verb substantive in the first person is understood. The passage, I think, might receive emendation by a transposition of two words, which would stand better in the next clause than in this.

The passage at present stands thus;

ויקרא אריה על מצפה אדני אנכי

עמד תמיד יומם

ועל משמרתי אנכי

נצב כל הלילות :

By transposition I would arrange it thus ;

ויקרא אריה אדוני אנכי

על מצפה עמד תמיד יומם

ועל משמרתי אנכי נצב כל הלילות :

march up the dry bed of the river. See Cyropæd. p. 524, Hutch

inson. But the 9th verse evidently describes one man somehow or other drawn by the pair.

Verse 9. "And behold," &c. In the preceding verse the prophet recited what the watchman said; now he proceeds in the description of what the watchman sees. In the middle of the verse he answered," he recites again what the watchman says in consequence of what he had further seen: all along speaking of the watchman as a third per. son. In the 10th verse he discovers that he is himself the watchman.

Verse 10. "O my thrashing." O nation of the Jews, thou object (not of my discipline, for the prophet certainly speaks in his own person), but of my unremitted pains and solicitude; the object upon which my labour in the prophetic ministry is bestowed.

The translation of the whole is thus:

THE BURTHEN OF THE MARSH.

1 Like the sweeping-whirlwinds in the south, For devastation from the desert it cometh, from

the dreaded land!

2 A grievous vision is set before me!

'That perfidious dealeth perfidiously, and that spoiler spoileth:

• Come up, O Elam! lay siege, O Media! 'I have put an end to all her vexations.'

3 For this my loins are filled with acute pain; Pangs seize me, as the pangs of a woman in travail. I am convulsed by what I hear,

I am astounded by what I see!

4 My thoughts' wander!

Fright? distracts me!

The sweet season of my morning sleep he appointed to me for horror.3

1 Literally, my heart:' but the heart, in the language of the sacred writers, signifies the whole inner man, the thoughts as well as the passions.

2" Fright"

The word n is a feminine singular, as appears by the form of the verb of which it is the subject.

3 The original seems to express the regular return of some distracting visions at this season appointed by Nature for a respite from every care. In the following verse the prophet seems to fall into one of these dreadful trances. The terror carried to the utmost height by the scene of the capture of the city, brings him to himself; and he awakes from the trance calling to the Babylonian chiefs, to apprise them of their danger.