nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

COMMENTARY.

The glories of the millennian kingdom of Christ, or the kingdom of the mountain*, form the principal subject of this prophecy. At the termination of the great period of 1260 days, the Jewish Church will begin to be restored to her right of primogeniture. She will join her younger sister, the Gentile Church; and will unite with her in receiving Jesus as the Messiah. Jerusalem will become a kind of spiritual metropolis of the fifth great monarchy, that of the Lamb: the glory of the Lord will be in the midst of her and she will be acknowledged by all nations to be the joy of the whole earth.

The return of the converted Jews will however be opposed by the faction of Antichrist and his congregated vassals. These the Lord will rebuke in his anger; and, after cutting off the irreclaimable part of the confederacy, will cause the rest to lay: down their weapons of war, and to humble themselves before Messiah the king.

* See Dan, ii. 35.

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PROPHECY IV.

The judicial blindness of the Jews-Their preservation from entire destruction..

11.

Isaiah vi. 8. And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. 9. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 10. Make gross the heart of this people; make their ears dull, and close up their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. And I said, Lord, how long? And he answered: Until the cities be laid waste, so that there be no inhabitant; and the houses, so that there be no man; and the land be utterly desolate; 12. And the Lord have removed men far away; and there be many a deserted woman in the midst of the land. 13. And, though there be a tenth part remaining in it, even this shall undergo a repeated destruction: yet, as the ilex, and the oak, though cut down, hath its stock remaining, so shall a holy seed be the stock of the nation.

* Many a deserted woman.] See Bp. Lowth and the Bp. of Killalla.

COMMENTARY.

The remarkable judicial blindness of the Jews, with respect to the promised Messiah, is here`very clearly predicted; and, accordingly, the prophecy is so applied both by our Lord himself, and by his apostles St. John and St. Paul *. This blindness is to continue during the whole time of the dispersion and so accurately has the prediction been fulfilled, that now, at the end of seventeen centuries from the sacking of Jerusalein by Titus, we still behold the Jews removed far away from the land of their fathers, and labouring under the same astonishing infatuation that prompted their ancestors to crucify the Lord of life.

Yet, notwithstanding the general dispersion and ruin of the people, a tenth part was to remain in the land; but even this scanty remnant was to undergo a repeated destruction. Nevertheless the nation itself was to be preserved in the midst of its calamities; and, although frequently undergoing an almost total excision, was still to shoot forth again like young twigs from the stump of an pak that has been cut down. The passage, in which this part of the prediction is contained,

though somewhat obscure, and variously ex"plained by various interpreters, yet, I think, has "been made so clear by the accomplishment of

Matt. xiii. 14. John xii. 40. Acts xxviii. 26.

"the prophecy, that there remains little room to "doubt of the sense of it. When Nebuchadnezzar had carried away the greater and better part of the people into captivity, there was yet a tenth remaining in the land, the poorer sort, " left to be vine-dressers and husbandmen under "Gedaliah; and the dispersed Jews gathered "themselves together, and returned to him †;

yet even these, fleeing into Egypt after the "death of Gedaliah, contrary to the warning of "God given by the prophet Jeremiah, miserably "perished there. Again, in the subsequent and

more remarkable completion of the prophecy in "the destruction of Jerusalem and the dissolution "of the commonwealth by the Romans, when the "Jews, after the loss of above a million of men, "had increased from the scanty residue that was "left of them, and had become very numerous

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again in their country; Hadrian, provoked by "their rebellious behaviour, slew above half a "million more of them, and a second time almost "extirpated the nation. Yet, after these signal "and almost universal destructions of that nation, " and after so many other repeated exterminations, "and massacres of them, in different times and on various occasions since, we yet see, with " astonishment, that the stock still remains, from " which God, according to his promise frequently ↑ Jer. xl. 12.

2 Kings xxv. 12, 22,

"given by his prophets, will cause his people to "shoot forth again and to flourish *.

See also Mr. Lowth in loc. orators in the Jewish San

Bp. Lowth's Isaiah in loc. We ought," says one of the hedrim at Paris," to return our thanks to Providence, who "has not suffered that the aged tree should be torn up by the roots, though it has often permitted that its branches "should severely suffer." Trans. of Paris. Sanhed. p. 165. The Bp. of Killalla, in his version of Isaiah, translates the 13th verse differently from Bp. Lowth. But yet in it shall "be left a tenth, and it (the land) shall recover and serve for "pasture. As the elm, and as the oak, which, when they "cast their leaves, have their sap in them; so a holy seed "shall be the sap thereof." This version, which has certainly the merit of being more literal than the other, gives a somewhat different turn to the prophecy. It may be paraphrased as follows. When the Jews are dispersed, a tenth of the "population only shall be left in the land: yet, desolate as "the land may be, and as the very travellers observe it to "be (Deut. xxix. 22-28.), it shall nevertheless hereafter recover and serve for pasture. For the holy seed, destined "to be preserved and restored notwithstanding their many "calamities, will be, as it were, the sap thereof; as the elm "and the oak, though leafless and apparently dead in winter, "put forth their foliage again in spring by reason of their sap "remaining in them." The chief objection to this translation is the harshness of the metaphor, which considers the holy seed as the sap of the land. It is proper to observe, that in a letter which I have had the honour to receive from his Lordship, he gives up this translation,

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