in my greatness. 4. A sound of a multitude in the mountains, as of a great people! A sound of the tumult of kingdoms, of nations gathered together! The Lord of hosts mustereth the host for the battle. 5. They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens; the Lord, and the instruments of his wrath to destroy the whole land. 6. Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand: it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. 7. Therefore shall all hands be slackened; and every man's heart shall melt; and they shall be afraid. 8. Pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall look upon one another with astonishment; their countenances shall be like flames of fire. 9. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, inexorable; even indignation, and burning wrath to make the land a desolation; and her sinners he shall destroy out of her. 10. Yea, the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof, shall not send forth their light the sun is darkened at his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. 11. And I will visit the world for its evil, and the wicked for their ini

quity:

I will visit the world.] "That is, the Babylonish empire: “as 'n exeper for the Roman empire, or for Judèa (Luke ii. 1. "Acts xi. 28.) So universus orbis Romanus, for the Roman "empire (Salvian. Lib. v.) Minos calls Crete his world: "Creten, quæ meus est orbis." Ovid. Metam. viii. 99. (Bp.

Lowth

quity and I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud; and I will bring down the haughtiness of the terrible. 19. And Babylon shall become, she that was the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the pride of the Chaldeans, as the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, by the hand of God. 20. It shall not be inhabited for ever; nor shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there: neither shall the shepherds make their folds there. 21. But there shall the wild beasts of the deserts lodge; and howling monsters shall fill their houses: and there shall the daughters of the ostrich dwell; and there shall the satyrs hold their revels. 22. And wolves shall howl to one another in their palaces; and dragons in their voluptuous pavilions. And her time is near to come; and her days shall not be prolonged.

xiv. 1. For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel. And he shall give them rest upon their own land: and the

Lowth in loc.). The Bp. of Killalla translates an according to its other sense of bestiality or unnatural sin; and says, that the parallellism shews such to be its meaning here. I cannot agree with him. What is punished must be persons, namely a world of sinners; not a thing, such as sin. Sin itself cannot be punished. Since all, who are spoken of in this verse as being punished, are persons,the wicked, the proud, the terrible; the parallellism requires that aw should be translated so as to bear a personal signification likewise, as the world. In his letter to me his lordship gives up this translation.

stranger

stranger shall be joined unto them, and shall cleave unto the house of Jacob. 2. And the nations shall take them, and bring them into their own place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord, as servants, and as handmaids and they shall take them captive, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

3. And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve: 4. That thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and shalt say;

How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city* ceased! 5. The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre of the rulers. 6. He, that smote the peoples in wrath, with a stroke unremitted; he, that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth. 7. The whole earth rests, is quict: the fir-trees also break forth into sounds of joy; 8. The cedars of Lebanon rejoice over thee, saying, Since thou art fallen, no feller is come up against us. 9. Hades from beneath is moved because of thee, to meet thee at

*The golden city.] Κεχρυσωμένη χρυσῳ Babylon is said to "be in the Revelation xvii. 4. пan, being a Chaldee word, "was probably the epithet by which that people distinguished "their capital, as the Italians say, Florence the fair, Padua "the learned." Bp. of Killalla in loc.

12.

thy coming he rouseth for thee the mighty dead, all the great chiefs of the earth; he maketh to rise up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. 10. All of them shall accost thee, and say unto thee: Art thou, even thou too, become weak as we? Art thou made like unto us? 11. Is then thy pride brought down to the grave; the sound of thy sprightly instruments? Is the vermin become thy couch, and the earth-worm thy covering? How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning! art cut down to the earth, thou that didst subdue the nations! 13. For thou didst say in thy heart: I will ascend the heavens; above the stars of God I will exalt my throne; and I will sit upon the mount of the divine presence*, on the sides of the north: 14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15. But thou shalt be brought down to the grave, to the sides of the pit. 16. Those, that see thee, shall look attentively at thee; they shall well consider thee: Is this the man, that made the earth to tremble; that shook the kingdoms? 17. That made the world like a desert; that destroyed the

The mount of the divine presence.] See Bp. Lowth in loc. Thus Antichrist is said by Daniel to pitch his tents in the glorious holy mountain. I believe the two passages to relate to the same event. I cannot assent to the propriety of the Bp. of Killalla's elucidation, though it is highly beautiful and poe. tical. Indeed, in his letter to me, his Lordship himself doubts it.

VOL. I.

L

eities?

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cities that never dismissed his captives to their own home? 18. All the kings of the nations, all of them, lie down in glory, each in his own sepulchre: 19. But thou art cast out of the grave, as the tree abominated*; cloathed with the slain, with the pierced by the sword, with them that go down to the stones of the pit; as a trodden carcase. 20. Thou shalt not be joined unto them in burial; because thou hast destroyed thy country, thou hast slain thy people: the seed of evil doers shall never be reuowned. 21. Prepare ye slaughter for his children, for the iniquity of their fathers; lest they rise, and possess the earth; and fill the face of the world with cities. 22. For I will arise against them, saith the Lord of hosts; and I will cut off from Babylon the name, and the remnant, and the son, and the son's son, saith the Lord; 23. And I will make it an inheritance for the porcupinc, and pools of water; and I will plunge it in the miry gulph of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts. 24. The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying: Surely, as I have devised, so shall it be; and, as

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* The tree abominated.] "That is, as an abomination and "detestation; such as the tree is, on which a malefactor has "been hanged. It is written, saith St. Paul, cursed is every man that hangeth on a tree, from Deut. xxi. 23. The Jews "therefore held also as accursed and polluted the tree itself, 66 on which a malefactor had been executed, or on which he "had been hanged after having been put to death by stoning." Bp. Lowth in loc.